Lost ships and lonely seas

By Ralph Delahaye Paine

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lost ships and lonely seas

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Lost ships and lonely seas

Author: Ralph Delahaye Paine

Release date: June 1, 2024 [eBook #73749]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Century Co, 1920

Credits: Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOST SHIPS AND LONELY SEAS ***

Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional
notes will be found near the end of this ebook.

[Illustration: (cover)]

LOST SHIPS AND LONELY SEAS

[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE “POLLY”]

LOST SHIPS
AND
LONELY SEAS

BY
RALPH D. PAINE

ILLUSTRATED

[Illustration]

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I THE SINGULAR FATE OF THE BRIG POLLY 3

II HOW THE SCHOONER EXERTION FELL AMONG THIEVES 25

III THE TRAGEDY OF THE FRIGATE MEDUSA 51

IV THE WRECK OF THE BLENDEN HALL, EAST INDIAMAN 76

V THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID WOODARD, CHIEF MATE 107

VI CAPTAIN PADDOCK ON THE COAST OF BARBARY 131

VII FOUR THOUSAND MILES IN AN OPEN BOAT 160

VIII THE FRIGATES THAT VANISHED IN THE SOUTH SEAS 189

IX WHEN H. M. S. PHOENIX DROVE ASHORE 212

X THE ROARING DAYS OF PIRACY 232

XI THE LOSS OF THE WAGER MAN-OF-WAR 259

XII THE CRUISE OF THE WAGER’S LONG-BOAT 288

XIII THE GRIM TALE OF THE NOTTINGHAM GALLEY 309

XIV THE STORM-SWEPT FLEET OF ADMIRAL GRAVES 330

XV THE BRISK YARN OF THE SPEEDWELL PRIVATEER 350

XVI LUCKLESS SEAMEN LONG IN EXILE 367

XVII THE NOBLE KING OF THE PELEW ISLANDS 393

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The wreck of the _Polly_ _Frontispiece_

FACING
PAGE

Seamanship was helpless to ward off the attack of the storm
that left the brig a sodden hulk 8

Fresh water trickled from the end of the pistol-barrel, and
they caught it in a tin cup 16

_Volusia_ off Salem, built at Falmouth, Mass., in 1801, and
Wrecked at Cape Cod in 1802 20

The pirate captain boarding the captured _Exertion_ 29

Armed with as many of the aforementioned weapons as they could
well sling about their bodies 33

Boats were filled with men whose only thought was to save their
skins 56

The brig, which had made a long tack and was now steering
straight toward the raft 64

Governor Glass and his residence 97

Woodard raised his empty hands to ask for peace and mercy 112

Wreck of the _Grosvenor_ on the coast of Caffraria 144

Early American ship of the 18th Century 176

Perilous situation of the ship 224

The _Charlemagne_, a New York packet ship 272

Brig _Topaz_ of Newburyport, built in 1807 305

The brig _Olinda_ of Salem, built in 1825 352

Taking on the pilot in the 18th Century 384

LOST SHIPS AND LONELY SEAS

CHAPTER I

THE SINGULAR FATE OF THE BRIG _POLLY_

“Oh, night and day the ships come in,
The ships both great and small,
But never one among them brings
A word of him at all.
From Port o’ Spain and Trinidad,
From Rio or Funchal,
And along the coast of Barbary.”

Steam has not banished from the deep sea the ships that lift tall
spires of canvas to win their way from port to port. The gleam of their
topsails recalls the centuries in which men wrought with stubborn
courage to fashion fabrics of wood and cordage that should survive
the enmity of the implacable ocean and make the winds obedient.
Their genius was unsung, their hard toil forgotten, but with each
generation the sailing ship became nobler and more enduring, until it
was a perfect thing. Its great days live in memory with a peculiar
atmosphere of romance. Its humming shrouds were vibrant with the
eternal call of the sea, and in a phantom fleet pass the towering East
Indiaman, the hard-driven Atlantic packet, and the gracious clipper
that fled before the Southern trades.

A hundred years ago every bay and inlet of the New England coast was
building ships which fared bravely forth to the West Indies, to the
roadsteads of Europe, to the mysterious havens of the Far East. They
sailed in peril of pirate and privateer, and fought these rascals as
sturdily as they battled with wicked weather. Coasts were unlighted,
the seas uncharted, and navigation was mostly by guesswork, but these
seamen were the flower of an American merchant marine whose deeds are
heroic in the nation’s story. Great hearts in little ships, they dared
and suffered with simple, uncomplaining fortitude. Shipwreck was an
incident, and to be adrift in lonely seas or cast upon a barbarous
shore was sadly commonplace. They lived the stuff that made fiction
after they were gone.

Your fancy may be able to picture the brig _Polly_ as she steered down
Boston harbor in December, 1811, bound out to Santa Cruz with lumber
and salted provisions for the slaves of the sugar plantations. She was
only a hundred and thirty tons burden and perhaps eighty feet long.
Rather clumsy to look at and roughly built was the _Polly_ as compared
with the larger ships that brought home the China tea and silks to
the warehouses of Salem. Such a vessel was a community venture. The
blacksmith, the rigger, and the calker took their pay in shares, or
“pieces.” They became part owners, as did likewise the merchant who
supplied stores and material; and when the brig was afloat, the master,
the mate, and even the seamen were allowed cargo space for commodities
that they might buy and sell to their own advantage. A voyage directly
concerned a whole neighborhood.

Every coastwise village had a row of keel-blocks sloping to the tide.
In winter weather too rough for fishing, when the farms lay idle, the
Yankee Jack of all trades plied his axe and adz to shape the timbers
and peg together such a little vessel as the _Polly_, in which to trade
to London or Cadiz or the Windward Islands. Hampered by an unfriendly
climate, hard put to it to grow sufficient food, with land immensely
difficult to clear, the New-Englander was between the devil and the
deep sea, and he sagaciously chose the latter. Elsewhere, in the early
days, the forest was an enemy, to be destroyed with great pains. The
pioneers of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine regarded it with
favor as the stuff with which to make stout ships and the straight
masts they “stepped” in them.

Nowadays, such a little craft as the _Polly_ would be rigged as
a schooner. The brig is obsolete, along with the quaint array of
scows, ketches, pinks, brigantines, and sloops which once filled the
harbors and hove their hempen cables short to the clank of windlass or
capstan-pawl, while the brisk seamen sang a chantey to help the work
along. The _Polly_ had yards on both masts, and it was a bitter task to
lie out in a gale of wind and reef the unwieldy single topsails. She
would try for no record passages, but jogged sedately, and snugged down
when the weather threatened.

On this tragic voyage she carried a small crew, Captain W. L. Cazneau,
a mate, four sailors, and a cook who was a native Indian. No mention
is to be found of any ill omens that forecasted disaster, such as a
black cat, or a cross-eyed Finn in the forecastle. Two passengers were
on board, “Mr. J. S. Hunt and a negro girl nine years old.” We know
nothing whatever about Mr. Hunt, who may have been engaged in some
trading “adventure” of his own. Perhaps his kinsfolk had waved him a
fare-ye-well from the pier-head when the _Polly_ warped out of her
berth.

The lone piccaninny is more intriguing. She appeals to the imagination
and inspires conjecture. Was she a waif of the slave traffic whom some
benevolent merchant of Boston was sending to Santa Cruz to find a home
beneath kindlier skies? Had she been entrusted to the care of Mr. Hunt?
She is unexplained, a pitiful atom visible for an instant on the tide
of human destiny. She amused the sailors, no doubt, and that austere,
copper-hued cook may have unbent to give her a doughnut when she
grinned at the galley-door.

Four days out from Boston, on December 15, the _Polly_ had cleared
the perilous sands of Cape Cod and the hidden shoals of the Georges.
Mariners were profoundly grateful when they had safely worked offshore
in the winter-time and were past Cape Cod, which bore a very evil
repute in those days of square-rigged vessels. Captain Cazneau could
recall that somber day of 1802 when three fine ships, the _Ulysses_,
_Brutus_, and _Volusia_, sailing together from Salem for European
ports, were wrecked next day on Cape Cod. The fate of those who were
washed ashore alive was most melancholy. Several died of the cold, or
were choked by the sand which covered them after they fell exhausted.

As in other regions where shipwrecks were common, some of the natives
of Cape Cod regarded a ship on the beach as their rightful plunder.
It was old Parson Lewis of Wellfleet, who, from his pulpit window,
saw a vessel drive ashore on a stormy Sunday morning. “He closed his
Bible, put on his outside garment, and descended from the pulpit, not
explaining his intention until he was in the aisle, and then he cried
out, ‘_Start fair_’ and took to his legs. The congregation understood
and chased pell-mell after him.”

The brig _Polly_ laid her course to the southward and sailed into the
safer, milder waters of the Gulf Stream. The skipper’s load of anxiety
was lightened. He had not been sighted and molested by the British
men-of-war that cruised off Boston and New York to hold up Yankee
merchantmen and impress stout seamen. This grievance was to flame in a
righteous war only a few months later. Many a voyage was ruined, and
ships had to limp back to port short-handed, because their best men had
been kidnapped to serve in British ships. It was an age when might was
right on the sea.

[Illustration: SEAMANSHIP WAS HELPLESS TO WARD OFF THE ATTACK OF THE
STORM THAT LEFT THE BRIG A SODDEN HULK]

The storm which overwhelmed the brig _Polly_ came out of the
southeast, when she was less than a week on the road to Santa Cruz.
To be dismasted and waterlogged was no uncommon fate. It happens
often nowadays, when the little schooners creep along the coast, from
Maine and Nova Scotia ports, and dare the winter blows to earn their
bread. Men suffer in open boats, as has been the seafarer’s hard lot
for ages, and they drown with none to hear their cries, but they are
seldom adrift more than a few days. The story of the _Polly_ deserves
to be rescued from oblivion because, so far as I am able to discover,
it is unique in the spray-swept annals of maritime disaster.

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. They tried
to heave the vessel to, but she was battered and wrenched without
mercy. Stout canvas was whirled away in fragments. The seams of the
hull opened as she labored, and six feet of water flooded the hold.
Leaking like a sieve, the _Polly_ would never see port again.

Worse was to befall her. At midnight she was capsized, or thrown on her
beam-ends, as the sailor’s lingo has it. She lay on her side while the
clamorous seas washed clean over her. The skipper, the mate, the four
seamen, and the cook somehow clung to the rigging and grimly refused to
be drowned. They were of the old breed, “every hair a rope-yarn and
every finger a fish-hook.” They even managed to find an ax and grope
their way to the shrouds in the faint hope that the brig might right
if the masts went overside. They hacked away, and came up to breathe
now and then, until foremast and mainmast fell with a crash, and the
wreck rolled level. Then they slashed with their knives at the tangle
of spars and ropes until they drifted clear. As the waves rush across
a half-tide rock, so they broke over the shattered brig, but she no
longer wallowed on her side.

At last the stormy daylight broke. The mariners had survived, and they
looked to find their two passengers, who had no other refuge than
the cabin. Mr. Hunt was gone, blotted out with his affairs and his
ambitions, whatever they were. The colored child they had vainly tried
to find in the night. When the sea boiled into the cabin and filled it,
she had climbed to the skylight in the roof, and there she clung like a
bat. They hauled her out through a splintered gap, and sought tenderly
to shelter her in a corner of the streaming deck, but she lived no more
than a few hours. It was better that this bit of human flotsam should
flutter out in this way than to linger a little longer in this forlorn
derelict of a ship. The _Polly_ could not sink, but she drifted as a
mere bundle of boards with the ocean winds and currents, while seven
men tenaciously fought off death and prayed for rescue.

The gale blew itself out, the sea rolled blue and gentle, and the wreck
moved out into the Atlantic, having veered beyond the eastern edge
of the Gulf Stream. There was raw salt pork and beef to eat, nothing
else, barrels of which they fished out of the cargo. A keg of water
which had been lashed to the quarter-deck was found to contain thirty
gallons. This was all there was to drink, for the other water-casks
had been smashed or carried away. The diet of meat pickled in brine
aggravated the thirst of these castaways. For twelve days they chewed
on this salty raw stuff, and then the Indian cook, Moho by name,
actually succeeded in kindling a fire by rubbing two sticks together
in some abstruse manner handed down by his ancestors. By splitting
pine spars and a bit of oaken rail he was able to find in the heart
of them wood which had not been dampened by the sea, and he sweated
and grunted until the great deed was done. It was a trick which he was
not at all sure of repeating unless the conditions were singularly
favorable. Fortunately for the hapless crew of the _Polly_, their
Puritan grandsires had failed in their amiable endeavor to exterminate
the aborigine.

The tiny galley, or “camboose,” as they called it, was lashed to
ring-bolts in the deck, and had not been washed into the sea when the
brig was swept clean. So now they patched it up and got a blaze going
in the brick oven. The meat could be boiled, and they ate it without
stint, assuming that a hundred barrels of it remained in the hold. It
had not been discovered that the stern-post of the vessel was staved
in under water and all of the cargo excepting some of the lumber had
floated out.

The cask of water was made to last eighteen days by serving out a quart
a day to each man. Then an occasional rain-squall saved them for a
little longer from perishing of thirst. At the end of forty days they
had come to the last morsel of salt meat. The _Polly_ was following an
aimless course to the eastward, drifting slowly under the influence of
the ocean winds and currents. These gave her also a southerly slant,
so that she was caught by that vast movement of water which is known
as the Gulf Stream Drift. It sets over toward the coast of Africa and
sweeps into the Gulf of Guinea.

The derelict was moving away from the routes of trade to Europe into
the almost trackless spaces beneath the tropic sun, where the sea
glittered empty to the horizon. There was a remote chance that she
might be descried by a low-hulled slaver crowding for the West Indies
under a mighty press of sail, with her human freightage jammed between
decks to endure the unspeakable horrors of the Middle Passage. Although
the oceans were populous with ships a hundred years ago, trade flowed
on habitual routes. Moreover, a wreck might pass unseen two or three
miles away. From the quarter-deck of a small sailing ship there was
no such circle of vision as extends from the bridge of a steamer
forty or sixty feet above the water, where the officers gaze through
high-powered binoculars.

The crew of the _Polly_ stared at skies which yielded not the merciful
gift of rain. They had strength to build them a sort of shelter of
lumber, but whenever the weather was rough, they were drenched by the
waves which played over the wreck. At the end of fifty days of this
hardship and torment the seven were still alive, but then the mate, Mr.
Paddock, languished and died. It surprised his companions, for, as the
old record runs,

he was a man of robust constitution who had spent his life in
fishing on the Grand Banks, was accustomed to endure privations,
and appeared the most capable of standing the shocks of misfortune
of any of the crew. In the meridian of life, being about
thirty-five years old, it was reasonable to suppose that, instead
of the first, he would have been the last to fall a sacrifice to
hunger and thirst and exposure, but Heaven ordered it otherwise.

Singularly enough, the next to go was a young seaman, spare and active,
who was also a fisherman by trade. His name was Howe. He survived six
days longer than the mate, and “likewise died delirious and in dreadful
distress.” Fleeting thunder-showers had come to save the others, and
they had caught a large shark by means of a running bowline slipped
over his tail while he nosed about the weedy hull. This they cut up
and doled out for many days. It was certain, however, that unless they
could obtain water to drink they would soon be all dead men on the
_Polly_.

Captain Cazneau seems to have been a sailor of extraordinary resource
and resolution. His was the unbreakable will to live and to endure
which kept the vital spark flickering in his shipmates. Whenever there
was strength enough among them, they groped in the water in the hold
and cabin in the desperate hope of finding something to serve their
needs. In this manner they salvaged an iron tea-kettle and one of the
captain’s flint-lock pistols. Instead of flinging them away, he sat
down to cogitate, a gaunt, famished wraith of a man who had kept his
wits and knew what to do with them.

At length he took an iron pot from the galley, turned the tea-kettle
upside down on it, and found that the rims failed to fit together.
Undismayed, the skipper whittled a wooden collar with a seaman’s
sheath-knife, and so joined the pot and the kettle. With strips of
cloth and pitch scraped from the deck-beams, he was able to make a
tight union where his round wooden frame set into the flaring rim
of the pot. Then he knocked off the stock of the pistol and had the
long barrel to use for a tube. This he rammed into the nozzle of the
tea-kettle, and calked them as well as he could. The result was a crude
apparatus for distilling seawater, when placed upon the bricked oven of
the galley.

Imagine those three surviving seamen and the stolid redskin of a cook
watching the skipper while he methodically tinkered and puttered! It
was absolutely the one and final chance of salvation. Their lips were
black and cracked and swollen, their tongues lolled, and they could
no more than wheeze when they tried to talk. There was now a less
precarious way of making fire than by rubbing dry sticks together. This
had failed them most of the time. The captain had saved the flint and
steel from the stock of his pistol. There was tow or tarry oakum to be
shredded fine and used for tinder. This smoldered and then burst into a
tiny blaze when the sparks flew from the flint, and they knew that they
would not lack the blessed boon of fire.

Together they lifted the precious contrivance of the pot and the kettle
and tottered with it to the galley. There was an abundance of fuel from
the lumber, which was hauled through a hatch and dried on deck. Soon
the steam was gushing from the pistol-barrel, and they poured cool salt
water over the upturned spout of the tea-kettle to cause condensation.
Fresh water trickled from the end of the pistol-barrel, and they caught
it in a tin cup. It was scarcely more than a drop at a time, but they
stoked the oven and lugged buckets of salt water, watch and watch, by
night and day. They roused in their sleep to go on with the task with a
sort of dumb instinct. They were like wretched automatons.

So scanty was the allowance of water obtained that each man was limited
to “four small wine glasses” a day, perhaps a pint. It was enough to
permit them to live and suffer and hope. In the warm seas which now
cradled the _Polly_ the barnacles grew fast. The captain, the cook, and
the three seamen scraped them off and for some time had no other food.
They ate these shell-fish mostly raw, because cooking interfered with
that tiny trickle of condensed water.

[Illustration: FRESH WATER TRICKLED FROM THE END OF THE PISTOL-BARREL,
AND THEY CAUGHT IT IN A TIN CUP]

The faithful cook was the next of the five to succumb. He expired in
March, after they had been three months adrift, and the manner of his
death was quiet and dignified, as befitted one who might have been a
painted warrior in an earlier day. The account says of him:

On the 15th of March, according to their computation, poor Moho
gave up the ghost, evidently from want of water, though with much
less distress than the others, and in the full exercise of his
reason. He very devoutly prayed and appeared perfectly resigned to
the will of God who had so sorely afflicted him.

The story of the _Polly_ is unstained by any horrid episode of
cannibalism, which occurs now and then in the old chronicles of
shipwreck. In more than one seaport the people used to point at some
weather-beaten mariner who was reputed to have eaten the flesh of a
comrade. It made a marked man of him, he was shunned, and the unholy
notoriety followed him to other ships and ports. The sailors of the
_Polly_ did cut off a leg of the poor, departed Moho, and used it as
bait for sharks, and they actually caught a huge shark by so doing.

It was soon after this that they found the other pistol of the pair,
and employed the barrel to increase the capacity of the still. By
lengthening the tube attached to the spout of the tea-kettle, they
gained more cooling surface for condensation, and the flow of fresh
water now amounted to “eight junk bottles full” every twenty-four
hours. Besides this, wooden gutters were hung at the eaves of the
galley and of the rough shed in which they lived, and whenever rain
fell, it ran into empty casks.

The crew was dwindling fast. In April, another seaman, Johnson by name,
slipped his moorings and passed on to the haven of Fiddler’s Green,
where the souls of all dead mariners may sip their grog and spin their
yarns and rest from the weariness of the sea. Three men were left
aboard the _Polly_, the captain and two sailors.

The brig drifted into that fabled area of the Atlantic that is known as
the Sargasso Sea, which extends between latitudes 16° and 38° North,
between the Azores and the Antilles. Here the ocean currents are
confused and seem to move in circles, with a great expanse of stagnant
ocean, where the seaweed floats in tangled patches of red and brown and
green. It was an old legend that ships once caught in the Sargasso Sea
were unable to extricate themselves, and so rotted miserably and were
never heard of again. Columbus knew better, for his caravels sailed
through these broken carpets of weed, where the winds were so small and
fitful that the Genoese sailors despaired of reaching anywhere. The
myth persisted and it was not dispelled until the age of steam. The
doldrums of the Sargasso Sea were the dread of sailing ships.

The days and weeks of blazing calms in this strange wilderness of ocean
mattered not to the blindly errant wreck of the _Polly_. She was a
dead ship that had outwitted her destiny. She had no masts and sails
to push her through these acres of leathery kelp and bright masses
of weed which had drifted from the Gulf and the Caribbean to come to
rest in this solitary, watery waste. And yet to the captain and his
two seamen this dreaded Sargasso Sea was beneficent. The stagnant weed
swarmed with fish and gaudy crabs and mollusks. Here was food to be
had for the mere harvesting of it. They hauled masses of weed over the
broken bulwarks and picked off the crabs by hundreds. Fishing gear was
an easy problem for these handy sailormen. They had found nails enough;
hand-forged and malleable. In the galley they heated and hammered them
to make fish-hooks, and the lines were of small stuff “unrove” from
a length of halyard. And so they caught fish, and cooked them when
the oven could be spared. Otherwise they ate them raw, which was not
distasteful after they had become accustomed to it. The natives of the
Hawaiian Islands prefer their fish that way. Besides this, they split
a large number of small fish and dried them in the hot sun upon the
roof of their shelter. The sea-salt which collected in the bottom of
the still was rubbed into the fish. It was a bitter condiment, but it
helped to preserve them against spoiling.

The season of spring advanced until the derelict _Polly_ had been four
months afloat and wandering, and the end of the voyage was a long way
off. The minds and bodies of the castaways had adjusted themselves to
the intolerable situation. The most amazing aspect of the experience is
that these men remained sane. They must have maintained a certain order
and routine of distilling water, of catching fish, of keeping track
of the indistinguishable procession of the days and weeks. Captain
Cazneau’s recollection was quite clear when he came to write down his
account of what had happened. The one notable omission is the death of
another sailor, name unknown, which must have occurred after April. The
only seaman who survived to keep the skipper company was Samuel Badger.

[Illustration: “VOLUSIA” OFF SALEM, BUILT AT FALMOUTH, MASS., IN 1801,
AND WRECKED AT CAPE COD IN 1802

From a painting in Marine Room, Peabody Museum, Salem]

By way of making the best of it, these two indomitable seafarers
continued to work on their rough deck-house, “which by constant
improvement had become much more commodious.” A few bundles of hewn
shingles were discovered in the hold, and a keg of nails was found
lodged in a corner of the forecastle. The shelter was finally made
tight and weather-proof, but, alas! there was no need of having
it “more commodious.” It is obvious, also, that “when reduced to two
only, they had a better supply of water.” How long they remained in
the Sargasso Sea it is impossible to ascertain. Late in April it is
recounted that “no friendly breeze wafted to their side the seaweed
from which they could obtain crabs or insects.” The mysterious impulse
of the currents plucked at the keel of the _Polly_ and drew her clear
of this region of calms and of ancient, fantastic sea-tales. She moved
in the open Atlantic again, without guidance or destination, and yet
she seemed inexplicably to be following an appointed course, as though
fate decreed that she should find rescue waiting somewhere beyond the
horizon.

The brig was drifting toward an ocean more frequented, where the Yankee
ships bound out to the River Plate sailed in a long slant far over to
the African coast to take advantage of the booming trade-winds. She
was also wallowing in the direction of the route of the East Indiamen,
which departed from English ports to make the far-distant voyage
around the Cape of Good Hope. None of them sighted the speck of a
derelict, which floated almost level with the sea and had no spars to
make her visible. Captain Cazneau and his companion saw sails glimmer
against the sky-line during the last thousand miles of drift, but
they vanished like bits of cloud, and none passed near enough to bring
salvation.

June found the _Polly_ approaching the Canary Islands. The distance of
her journey had been about two thousand miles, which would make the
average rate of drift something more than three hundred miles a month,
or ten miles per day. The season of spring and its apple blossoms had
come and gone in New England, and the brig had long since been mourned
as missing with all hands. It was on the twentieth of June that the
skipper and his companion--two hairy, ragged apparitions--saw three
ships which appeared to be heading in their direction. This was in
latitude 28° North and longitude 13° West, and if you will look at a
chart you will note that the wreck would soon have stranded on the
coast of Africa. The three ships, in company, bore straight down at
the pitiful little brig, which trailed fathoms of sea-growth along her
hull. She must have seemed uncanny to those who beheld her and wondered
at the living figures that moved upon the weather-scarred deck. She
might have inspired “The Ancient Mariner.”

Not one ship, but three, came bowling down to hail the derelict. They
manned the braces and swung the main-yards aback, beautiful, tall
ships and smartly handled, and presently they lay hove to. The captain
of the nearest one shouted a hail through his brass trumpet, but the
skipper of the _Polly_ had no voice to answer back. He sat weeping
upon the coaming of a hatch. Although not given to emotion, he would
have told you that it had been a hard voyage. A boat was dropped from
the davits of this nearest ship, which flew the red ensign from her
spanker-gaff. A few minutes later Captain Cazneau and Samuel Badger,
able seaman, were alongside the good ship _Fame_ of Hull, Captain
Featherstone, and lusty arms pulled them up the ladder. It was six
months to a day since the _Polly_ had been thrown on her beam-ends and
dismasted.

The three ships had been near together in light winds for several days,
it seemed, and it occurred to their captains to dine together on board
the _Fame_. And so the three skippers were there to give the survivors
of the _Polly_ a welcome and to marvel at the yarn they spun. The
_Fame_ was homeward bound from Rio Janeiro. It is pleasant to learn
that Captain Cazneau and Samuel Badger “were received by these humane
Englishmen with expressions of the most exalted sensibility.” The musty
old narrative concludes:

Thus was ended the most shocking catastrophe which our seafaring
history has recorded for many years, after a series of distresses
from December 20 to the 20th of June, a period of one hundred and
ninety-two days. Every attention was paid to the sufferers that
generosity warmed with pity and fellow-feeling could dictate, on
board the _Fame_. They were transferred from this ship to the brig
_Dromio_ and arrived in the United States in safety.

Here the curtain falls. I for one should like to hear more incidents of
this astonishing cruise of the derelict _Polly_ and also to know what
happened to Captain Cazneau and Samuel Badger after they reached the
port of Boston. Probably they went to sea again, and more than likely
in a privateer to harry British merchantmen, for the recruiting officer
was beating them up to the rendezvous with fife and drum, and in August
of 1812 the frigate _Constitution_, with ruddy Captain Isaac Hull
walking the poop in a gold-laced coat, was pounding the _Guerrière_ to
pieces in thirty minutes, with broadsides whose thunder echoed round
the world.

“Ships are all right. It is the men in them,” said one of Joseph
Conrad’s wise old mariners. This was supremely true of the little brig
that endured and suffered so much, and among the humble heroes of blue
water by no means the least worthy to be remembered are Captain Cazneau
and Samuel Badger, able seaman, and Moho, the Indian cook.

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. Their vocation had
fallen to a low ebb indeed in the early part of the nineteenth century,
when they still infested the storied waters of the Caribbean and
struggled along, in some instances, on earnings no larger than those of
a minister or school-teacher of to-day. Ambitious young men had ceased
to follow piracy as a career. The distinguished leaders had long since
vanished, most of them properly hanged in chains, and it was no longer
possible to become a William Kidd, a Captain Ned England, or a Charles
Vane.

The schooner _Exertion_, Captain Barnabas Lincoln, sailed from Boston,
bound to Trinidad, Cuba, on November 13, 1821, with a crew consisting
of Joshua Brackett, mate; David Warren, cook; and Thomas Young,
George Reed, and Francis De Suze as able seamen. There was nothing in
the cargo to tempt a self-respecting pirate; no pieces of eight or
doubloons or jewels, but flour, beef, pork, lard, butter, fish, onions,
potatoes, apples, hams, furniture, and shooks with a total invoiced
value of eight thousand dollars. In this doleful modern era of the
high cost of living, such a cargo would, of course persuade almost any
honest householder to turn pirate if he thought there was a fighting
chance of stowing all these valuables in his cellar.

The _Exertion_ jogged along without incident for a five weeks’ passage,
which brought her close to Cape Cruz and the end of the run, when a
strange sail swept out of a channel among the sandy Cuban keys, with
sweeps out and a deck filled with men. There were forty of them,
unkempt, bewhiskered, and they appeared to be so many walking arsenals
of muskets, blunderbusses, cutlasses, pistols, and dirks. Their
schooner mounted two carronades, and flew a blue-and-white flag of the
Republic of Mexico, which was a device popular among sea-rovers who
were no better than they should be. It permitted liberty of action,
something like a New Jersey charter which corporations have found
elastic in times more recent.

Captain Lincoln hove the _Exertion_ to and hoped for the best, having
only five men and seven muskets with which to repel boarders. The
United States was at peace with Mexico and Spain, and he tried to
believe, as he tells us, that “the republican flag indicated both honor
and friendship from those who wore it.” Alas! it was soon discovered
that these were common pirates, for they sent a boat aboard in charge
of the first lieutenant, Bolidar, with six or eight Spaniards, “armed
with as many of the aforementioned weapons as they could well sling
about their bodies.” The _Exertion_ was ordered to follow the other
schooner, the _Mexican_ by name, and the two vessels came to anchor off
Cay Largo, about thirty leagues from Trinidad.

There one of the pirates, the sailing-master, who called himself
Nikola, remained in the _Exertion_ to examine the captain’s papers.
This forbidding person was, in fact, a Scotchman, as his speech readily
disclosed, and he was curiously out of place among the dirty crew of
Spanish renegades. In him the unlucky skipper of the _Exertion_ had
found a friend, of whom he said:

This Nikola had a countenance rather pleasing, although his beard
and mustachios had a frightful appearance,--his face, apparently
full of anxiety, indicated something in my favor. He gave me back
my papers, saying, “Take good care of them, for I am afraid you
have fallen into bad hands.”

The pirates then sent a boat to the _Exertion_ with more men and arms,
leaving a heavy guard on board and taking Captain Lincoln and his
Yankee seamen off to their own low, rakish craft, where they served
out the rum and vainly tried to persuade them to enlist, with promise
of dazzling booty. Captain Lincoln was not at all attracted by this
business opportunity, and sadly he returned to his schooner, where he
found Lieutenant Bolidar in the cabin and the place in a sorry mess. It
is well known that, whatever their other virtues, pirates as a class
had no manners. With a few exceptions the best of them lived like pigs
and behaved like hooligans. The captain’s narrative declares:

They had emptied a case of liquors, and broken a cheese to pieces
and crumbled it on the table and the cabin floor and, elated with
their prize as they called it, they had drunk so much as to make
them desperately abusive. I was permitted to lie down in my berth
but, reader, if you have ever been awakened by a gang of armed
desperadoes who have taken possession of your habitation in the
midnight hour, you can imagine my feelings. Sleep was a stranger to
me and anxiety was my guest. Bolidar, however, pretended friendship
and flattered me with the prospect of being set at liberty, but I
found him, as I suspected, a consummate hypocrite. Indeed, his very
looks indicated it.

He was a stout and well-built man, of a dark swarthy complexion,
with keen, ferocious eyes, huge whiskers and beard under his chin
and on his lips. He was a Portuguese by birth but had become a
naturalized Frenchman,--had a wife and children in France and
was well-known there as commander of a first-rate privateer. His
appearance was truly terrific. He could talk some English and had a
most lion-like voice.

[Illustration: THE PIRATE CAPTAIN BOARDING THE CAPTURED “EXERTION”]

Next day the scurvy knaves began plundering the _Exertion_ of her cargo
of potatoes, butter, apples, beans, and so on, ripped up the floors
in search of more liquor, found some hard cider, and guzzled it until
officers and men were in a fight, all tipsy together, and then simmered
down to sing sentimental ditties in the twilight. Soon after this both
schooners got under way and sailed to another haven in the lee of
Brigantine Cay. Captain Lincoln now saw something more of the roving
scapegrace of a Scotchman who called himself Nikola. He was a pirate
with a sentimental streak in him and professed himself to be unhappy
in his lawless employment and declared he had signed articles in the
belief that he was bound privateering.

A theatrical person was the bewhiskered Nikola, who properly belonged
to fiction of the romantic school. Sympathetic Captain Lincoln wrote
that he

lamented most deeply his own situation, for he was one of those men
whose early good impressions were not entirely effaced. He told me
that those who had taken me were no better than pirates and their
end would be the halter, but he added, with peculiar emotion, “I
will never be hung as a pirate,” showing me a bottle of laudanum
which he had found in my medicine chest and saying, “If we are
overtaken, this shall cheat the hangman before we are condemned.”

Another day’s cruise to the eastward and the trim, taut little
_Exertion_ suffered the melancholy fate of shipwreck, not bravely
in a gale, but mishandled and wantonly gutted by her captors. First
she stranded on a bar while making in for a secluded creek, and was
floated after throwing overboard the deck-load of shooks for making
sugar-barrels. Then her sails were stripped, the rigging cut to pieces,
and the masts chopped over the side lest they be sighted from seaward.
After that the pirates hewed gaps in the deck and bulwarks in order to
loot the rest of the cargo more easily, and the staunch schooner was
left to bleach her bones on the Cuban coast.

The amiable Nikola found himself in trouble because of his friendly
feeling for Captain Lincoln. The Spanish sailors tied him to a tree
and were about to shoot him as a soft-hearted traitor who was guilty
of unprofessional conduct, but a courageous French pirate surged into
the picture with several men of his own opinion, and remarked that when
the shooting began there would be other targets besides Nikola. This
convinced the mob that it might be healthier to let the Scotchman alone.

The captain and crew of the _Exertion_ were threatened and ill used,
but there seemed to be no intention of making them walk the plank or
hewing them down with cutlasses. What to do with them was a problem
rather perplexing, which was proof that the trade of piracy had fallen
from its former estate. These were thrifty freebooters, however, and
the business was capably organized. There were even traces of the
efficiency management which was to become the religion of the twentieth
century. The pirates’ largest boat was manned by a crew which discarded
some of its weapons, combed its whiskers, even washed its faces, and
set off for the port of Principe in charge of the terrifying Bolidar.

The boat carried letters to a merchant by the name of Dominico who
acted as the commercial agent of the industrious pirates and sold their
plunder for them. A representative of his was kept on board the wicked
schooner and went to sea with her, presumably to make sure of honest
dealings, a sensible precaution in the case of such slippery gentry.
The whole arrangement was most reprehensible, of course, but it had
flourished on a much larger scale in the godly ports of Boston and New
York during an earlier era.

It was to put a stop to such scandalous traffic that Richard Coote,
Earl of Bellomont, had been sent out by King William III in 1695 as
royal governor of the colonies of New York and Massachusetts. Colonial
merchants, outwardly the pattern of respectability, were in secret
partnership with the swarm of pirates which infested the American coast
and waxed rich on the English commerce of the Indian Ocean.

“I send you, my Lord, to New York,” said King William to Bellomont,
“because an honest and intrepid man is wanted to put these abuses down,
and because I believe you to be such a man.”

As a result of these instructions, Captain William Kidd was employed
to hunt the pirates down by sea while Governor Bellomont made it hot
for the unscrupulous merchants ashore who were, no doubt, the ancestors
of the modern American profiteers in food and clothing, who are also
most respectable men. Captain Kidd was a merchant shipmaster of brave
and honorable repute who had a comfortable home in Liberty Street, New
York, was married to a widow of good family, and was highly esteemed
by the Dutch and English people of the town. A shrewd trader who
made money for his owners, he was also a fighting seaman of such proved
mettle that he had been given command of privateers which cruised off
the coasts of the colonies and harried the French in the West Indies.
His excellent reputation and character are attested by official
documents.

[Illustration: ARMED WITH AS MANY OF THE AFOREMENTIONED WEAPONS AS THEY
COULD WELL SLING ABOUT THEIR BODIES]

How Captain Kidd, sent out to catch pirates, was convicted of
turning pirate himself rather than sail home empty-handed is another
story. Fate has played strange tricks with the memory of this
seventeenth-century seafarer who never cut a throat or scuttled a ship,
and who was hanged at Execution Dock for the excessively unromantic
crime of cracking the skull of his mutinous gunner with a wooden bucket.

Poor Captain Barnabas Lincoln of Boston, having lost his schooner
and cargo, was righteously indignant at discovering how the infamous
business was carried on. Said he:

I was informed by a line from Nikola that the pirates had a man
on board, a native of Principe, who in the garb of a sailor was a
partner with Dominico, but I could not get sight of him. This lets
us a little into the plan by which this atrocious system has been
conducted. Merchants having partners on board of these pirates!
Thus pirates at sea and robbers on land are associated to destroy
the peaceful trader.

Nikola remained true to Captain Lincoln, even sending him a letter from
Principe to tell him about the disposition of the stolen cargo and what
prices it was fetching. In this letter he revealed the fact that his
true name was Jamieson and concluded with this romantic flight:

Perhaps in your old age, when you recline with ease in a corner of
your cottage, you will have the goodness to drop a tear of pleasure
to the memory of him whose highest ambition should have been to
subscribe himself, though devoted to the gallows, your friend,

NIKOLA MONACRE.

Another streak of sentiment was discovered in one of the _Exertion’s_
sailors, Francis De Suze, a Portuguese, who finally weakened and
decided to join the outlaws. He was won over by the artful persuasions
of his fellow-countryman, Lieutenant Bolidar of the ferocious mien and
lion-like voice. To Captain Lincoln he explained, with tears in his
eyes:

“I shall do nothing but what I am compelled to do and will not aid
in the least to hurt you or your vessel. I am very sorry to leave
you.”

The pious master of the _Exertion_ bore up under his troubles with a
spirit truly admirable, but it was one thing after another, and under
date of Sunday, December 30, he wrote in his diary:

This day, which particularly reminds Christians of the high duties
of compassion and benevolence, is never observed by these pirates.
This, of course, we might expect, as they do not often know when
Sunday comes and if they do, it is spent in gambling. Early this
morning, the merchant, as they call him, came with a large boat
for more cargo. I was ordered into a boat with my crew, without
any breakfast, and carried about three miles to a small island out
of sight of the _Exertion_ and left there by the side of a pond
of thick, muddy water with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. One
of the boat’s crew told us that the merchant was afraid of being
recognized, and when he had gone the boat would return for us, but
we passed the day in the greatest anxiety. At night, however, the
boat came and took us again on board the _Exertion_ where to our
surprise and grief we found they had broken open the trunks and
chests and taken all our wearing apparel, not leaving me even a
shirt or a pair of pantaloons, nor sparing a small miniature of my
wife which was in the trunk.

The pirate schooner was employed a few days later to fill her hold with
cargo from the _Exertion_ and hoist sail for Principe. They lifted the
stuff out with a “Yo, ho, ho!” which made Captain Lincoln so unhappy
that he pensively wrote:

How different was this sound from what it would have been had I
been permitted to pass unmolested by these lawless plunderers and
been favored with a safe arrival at the port of my destination
where my cargo would have found an excellent sale. Then would the
“_yo, ho, ho!_” on its discharging have been a delightful sound to
me.

As a final touch to affect the modern reader with a sense of comedy
and the captain with additional woe, the pirates fished out the
_Exertion’s_ consignments of furniture and, for lack of space below,
sailed off with chairs lashed to the rail in rows and tables hung in
the rigging. There now appears the figure of the pirate commander
himself, for Bolidar was merely the lieutenant, or executive officer.
To Captain Lincoln, gloomily watching the pirate schooner in the
offing, with her picturesque garniture of hand-made New England
furniture, came Bolidar with five men, his own personal armament
consisting of a blunderbuss, cutlass, a long knife, and a pair of
pistols. This fearsome lieutenant took Captain Lincoln by the arm, led
him aside, and imparted:

“My _capitan_ sends me for your wash.”

Properly resentful, the master of the _Exertion_ replied:

“Damn your eyes! I have no clothes, nor any soap to wash with. You have
stolen them all.”

“Ah, ha, but I will have your wash, _pronto_!” cried Bolidar, waving
the blunderbuss. “What you call him that makes _tick-tock_, same as the
clock?”

Disgustedly Captain Lincoln extracted his watch from the place where he
had hidden it. The cloud had a silver lining, for Bolidar graciously
handed over a small bundle at parting.

It contained a pair of linen drawers sent me by Nikola, also
the Rev. Mr. Brooks’ Family Prayer Book. This gave me great
satisfaction. Soon after, Bolidar returned with his captain who
had one arm slung up, yet with as many implements of war as his
diminutive self could conveniently carry. He told me (through an
interpreter who was his prisoner) that on his last cruise he had
fallen in with two Spanish privateers and beat them off, but had
fourteen of his men killed and was himself wounded in the arm.
Bolidar turned to me and said, “It is a d--n lie,” which words
proved to be correct for his arm was not wounded and when I saw him
again he had forgotten to sling it up.

An accurate and convincing portrait, this, and painted with very
few strokes--the strutting little braggart of a pirate chief who
resorted to such cheap and stagy tricks as bandaging his arm to make
an impression! Having disposed of the cargo, it now transpired that
the prisoners were to be marooned and left to perish. After all, the
traditions of piracy had not been wholly lost and these sordid rascals
were running true to form. With an inkling of this fate, Mr. Joshua
Brackett, the mate of the _Exertion_, was heard to say:

“I cannot tell what awaits us, but it appears to me that the worst is
to come.”

This is how Captain Lincoln quoted it in his diary, but the mate of the
schooner, sorely tried as he must have been, was more likely to exclaim:

“I can’t fathom all their ---- ---- tricks, but it looks to me as if
the bloody rogues had made up their minds to scupper us, and may they
sizzle in hell for a million years!”

The pirate chief and his officers held a whispered conference and then
spent the last night ashore in gambling, the diminutive leader “in
hopes of getting back some of the five hundred dollars he had lost a
few nights before; which made him unusually fractious.”

Before they were marooned, Captain Lincoln took pains to note down that
the pirates were sporting new canvas trousers made from the light sails
of the _Exertion_ and that they had cut up the colors to make fancy
belts to keep their money in, and he added this vivid little touch to
the portrait of the chief, “The captain had on one of my best shirts, a
cleaner one than I had ever seen him wear before.”

At sunset the crew of the _Exertion_, with several prisoners taken out
of a Spanish merchant prize, were put into a boat. At this lamentable
moment, Nikola stepped to the front again and said to Captain Lincoln:

“My friend, I will give you your book,” (a volume of Rev. Mr.
Coleman’s sermons). “It is the only thing of yours that is in my
possession. I dare not attempt anything more. _Never mind, I may see
you again before I die._”

There were eleven prisoners in all, without arms, and to sustain life
only a ten-gallon keg of water, part of a barrel of flour, one ham,
and a little salt fish, not forgetting the precious volume of Mr.
Coleman’s sermons. They were carried to a tiny key, or islet, no more
than a shoal of white sand an acre in extent and barely lifted above
high tide, forty miles off the Cuban coast and well out of the track of
vessels. No wonder that Captain Lincoln was moved to ejaculate:

“Look at us now, my friends, left benighted on a little spot of
sand in the midst of the ocean, with every appearance of a violent
thunder tempest and a boisterous night. Judge of my feelings and
the circumstances which our band of sufferers now witnessed.
Perhaps you can, and have pitied us. I assure you we were very
wretched, and to depict the scene is beyond my power.”

They found a fragment of a thatched hut built by turtle fishermen, but
now whipped bare by the winds, and it served as a slight shelter from
the burning sun. Fire they kindled by means of a piece of cotton-wick
yarn and a flint and steel. They dug holes for fresh water, but it was
too salty to drink. At bedtime the captain read aloud selections from
the Rev. Mr. Brooks’s Family Prayer-Book, and they slept in the sand
when the scorpions, centipedes, lizards, and mosquitoes permitted.

Of driftwood, palmetto logs, and bits of board they fashioned a little
raft and so explored the key nearest them. There they discovered some
shooks, planks, and pieces of spar which had been in the _Exertion’s_
deck-load and were thrown overboard when she grounded on the bar. With
the amazing handiness of good seamen they proceeded to build a boat
of this pitiful material. “Some of the Spaniards had secreted their
long knives in their trouserlegs, which proved very useful in fitting
timbers, and a gimblet of mine enabled us to use wooden pins,” explains
Captain Lincoln. “And now our spirits began to revive, although
_water_, _water_ was continually in our minds. Our labor was extremely
burdensome, and the Spaniards considerably peevish, but they would
often say to me, ‘Never mind, Captain, bye-and-bye Americans or Spanish
catch ’em and we go see ’em hung.’”

David Warren, the cook of the _Exertion_, had been ailing, and the
cruel ordeal of being marooned was too much for him. The captain
perceived that he was soon to leave them and suggested, as they sat by
the fire:

“I think it most likely that we shall die here soon, David, but as some
one of us may survive to carry the tidings to our friends, if you have
anything to say respecting your family, now is the time.”

The young sailor--he was only twenty-six--replied to this: “I have a
mother in Saco where I belong--she is a second time a widow. To-morrow,
if you can spare a scrap of paper and a pencil, I will write something.”

No to-morrow came to him. He passed out in the night, and the skipper
thought of his own wife and children in Boston. They dug a grave in the
sand, made a coffin of shooks, and stood with bare heads while Captain
Lincoln read the funeral prayer from the consolatory compilation of the
Rev. Mr. Brooks. One of the Spanish prisoners, an old man named Manuel,
made a wooden cross, and with great pains carved upon it the words,
“Jesus Christ Hath Him Now,” and placed it at the head of the grave.
There was the old Puritan strain in Captain Lincoln, who commented,
“Although I did not believe in the mysterious influence of the cross,
yet I was perfectly willing it should stand there.”

Enfeebled and lacking food and water, they stubbornly toiled at
building the boat, which was shaped like a flat-iron. When at length
they launched the wretched little box, it leaked like a basket, and,
to their dismay, would hold no more than six of them and stay afloat,
four to row, one to steer, and one to bail. Three Spaniards and a
Frenchman argued that they should go in search of help because they
were acquainted with the lay of the coast and could talk to the people.
This was agreed to, and Mr. Brackett, the mate, was also selected to
go, because the captain considered it his duty to stay with his men.
The sixth man was Joseph Baxter, and there is no other mention of him
in the narrative, so he must have been one of the prisoners who had
been brought along from another prize. They were given a keg of water,
“the least salty,” a few pancakes and salt fish, and embarked with the
best wishes and prayers of the other survivors.

On the torrid key waited the captain, old Manuel, Thomas Young, and
George Reed, while the painful days and the anxious nights dragged past
until almost a week had gone. The flour-barrel was empty, and they were
trying to exist on prickly pears and shell-fish, while the torments of
thirst were agonizing. At last they sighted a boat drifting by about
a mile distant, and hope flickered anew. The raft was shoved off, and
two of them overhauled the empty boat, which seemed to offer a way of
escape. Imagine their feelings at discovering that it was the same boat
in which Mr. Brackett and the five men had rowed away to find rescue
in the last extremity! It was full of water, without oars or paddles.
No wonder that Captain Lincoln wrote in his journal next day:

“This morning was indeed the most gloomy I had ever experienced.
There appeared hardly a ray of hope that my friend Brackett could
return, seeing the boat was lost. Our provisions gone, our mouths
parched extremely with thirst, our strength wasted, our spirits
broken, and our hopes imprisoned within the circumference of this
desolate island in the midst of an unfrequented ocean,--all these
things gave to the scene the hue of death.”

Later in this same day a sail was seen against the blue horizon. The
sloop boldly tacked among the tortuous shoals and was evidently heading
for the islet. Soon she fired a gun, and the castaways took her to be
another pirate vessel. She dropped anchor and lowered a boat in which
three men pulled to the beach. “Thinking it no worse to die by sword
than famine,” Captain Lincoln walked down to meet them. As the boat
drove through the surf, the man in the bow jumped out, waded ashore,
and rushed to embrace the captain.

It was none other than the Scotchman, Nikola Monacre, henceforth to be
known by the reputable and rightful name of Jamieson! He had shorn off
his ruffianly whiskers and abandoned his evil ways. The moment could
have been no more dramatic, the coincidence any happier, if it had been
contrived by a motion-picture director. To the modern reader it will
come as an agreeable surprise, I fancy, for until now the character of
Nikola, as conveyed in glimpses by Captain Lincoln, fails to win one’s
implicit confidence. While among the pirates he seemed a bit mushy and
impressionable, not quite the man to stand by through thick and thin
and hew a way out of his difficulties; but this was an unfair judgment.
He was leal and true to the last hair of his discarded mustachios. As
though he surmised that Captain Lincoln might have formed the same
opinion of him, the first words of this worthy hero were:

“Do you now believe that _Jamieson_ is your friend? And are these all
that are left of you? Ah, I suspected, and now I know what you were put
here for!”

Captain Lincoln explained the absence of the mate and the five sailors
who had vanished from the waterlogged boat. Jamieson had heard nothing
of them and ventured the conjecture:

“How unfortunate! They must be lost, or some pirates have taken them.”

He called to the two comrades who had come ashore with him, Frenchmen
and fine fellows, who also embraced the castaways and held to their
parched lips a tea-kettle filled with wine, and then fed them sparingly
with a dish of salt beef and potatoes. The others of the sloop’s crew
were summoned ashore, and while they all sat on the beach and ate and
drank, the admirable Jamieson spun the yarn of his own adventures. The
pirates had captured four small coasting-vessels and, being short of
prize-masters, had put him in charge of one of them, with a crew which
included the two Frenchmen. The orders were to follow the piratical
_Mexican_ into a harbor.

His captured schooner leaked so much that Jamieson abandoned her and
shifted to a sloop, in which he altered his course at night and so
slipped clear of the pirates. First he sailed back to the wreck of
the _Exertion_ on the chance that Captain Lincoln might be there.
Disappointed in this, he went to sea again and laid a course for the
key on which the prisoners had been marooned.

“We had determined among ourselves,” he explained, “that, should an
opportunity occur, we would come and save your lives, as we now have.”

All hands went aboard Jamieson’s sloop, and left the horrid place of
their banishment over the stern. The first port of call was the inlet
in which the _Exertion_ lay stranded. She was a forlorn derelict,
stripped of everything, and Captain Lincoln bade his luckless schooner
a sorrowful farewell. While beating out of this passage, an armed brig
was sighted five miles distant. She piped a boat away, which fired
several musket-balls through the sloop’s mainsail as soon as they drew
near each other, and it was suspected that these might be the same old
pirates of the _Mexican_. Declining to surrender, Jamieson and Captain
Lincoln served out muskets, and they peppered the strange boat in a
brisk little encounter until the brig sent two more boats away, and
resistance was seen to be futile.

The armed vessel turned out to be a lawful Spanish privateer, whose
captain showed no resentment at the fusillade. Indeed, he was
handsomely cordial, a very gentlemanly sailor, and invited Captain
Lincoln and his men into the cabin for dinner, where he informed them
that he had commanded a Yankee privateer out of Boston during the War
of 1812. Jamieson and his crew, for reasons best known to themselves,
signed articles as privateersmen and stayed in the brig. This was
preferable to risking the halter ashore.

Captain Lincoln was landed at Trinidad, Cuba, where he found American
friends and was soon able to secure a passage to Boston. It was not
until months later that he learned of the safe arrival on the Cuban
coast of Mr. Brackett, the mate, and the five men who had vanished in
the open boat. What befell them at sea, and how they were picked up, is
not revealed.

It would be a pity to dismiss the engaging Jamieson without some
further knowledge of his checkered career. A year and a half after
their parting, Captain Lincoln received a letter from him. He was
living quietly in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and at the captain’s very
urgent invitation he came to Boston for a visit. While in the privateer
brig, as he told it, they had fought a Colombian eighteen-gun
sloop-of-war for three hours. After a hammer-and-tongs engagement, both
ships drew off, very much battered. The Spanish privateer limped into
Santiago for repairs, and Jamieson was sent to a hospital with a bullet
through his arm. From there he had made his way to Jamaica, where
friends cared for him and kept him clear of the law.

He had the pleasure of seeing several of his old shipmates of the
_Mexican_ brought into Montego Bay, whence they were carried to
Kingston and ceremoniously hanged by the neck. Among them was Baltizar,
pilot of the pirate schooner, and in the words of Captain Lincoln:

“He was an old man, and as Jamieson said, it was a melancholy and
heart-rending sight to see him borne to execution with those gray
hairs which might have been venerable in virtuous old age, now a
reproach and shame to this hoary villain, for he was full of years
and old in iniquity.”

You may be sure that the picaresque Scotch rover, who had been so
faithful and kind, found a warm welcome at the fireside of Captain
Lincoln and in the taverns of the Boston waterside. He was contented
to lead the humdrum life of virtue and sailed with the skipper as mate
in a new schooner on several voyages to the West Indies. In his later
years he tired of the offshore trade and joined the fishing-fleet out
of Hingham during the summer months, while in the winter he taught
navigation to the young sailors of the neighborhood who aspired to rise
to a mate’s or master’s berth.

His grave is on the shore of Cape Cod, and as Captain Lincoln wrote of
him, “Peace to his ashes. They rest in a strange land, far from his
kindred and his native country.”

According to his own account, Jamieson was of a very respectable family
in Greenock. His father was a cloth merchant of considerable wealth,
but being left an orphan, he had run away to sea and engaged in an
astonishing variety of adventures. Of him Captain Lincoln said:

He had received a polite education and was of a very gentlemanly
deportment. He spoke several languages and was skilled in
drawing and painting. He had travelled extensively and his wide
fund of information made him a most entertaining companion. His
observations on the character of different nations were very
liberal; with a playful humorousness quite free from bigotry and
narrow prejudice.

An entertaining companion and philosopher, indeed, whose outlook had
been mellowed by the broadening influence of piracy, and you and I
would like nothing better than to have sat down with this reformed
gentleman of fortune a hundred years ago and listened to his playful
comments on the virtues and the vices of mankind, and his wondrous
yarns of men and ships and the winds that tramp the world.

Perhaps as he moved so sedately in the ordered life of Boston and
Hingham, or fared to the southward again as mate of a trading-schooner,
he shivered at recollection of that day in Kingston when ten of his
old shipmates of the _Mexican_ dangled from the gallows-tree and the
populace crowded to enjoy the diverting spectacle. And in his dreams he
may have heard the wailing voice of Pedro Nondre, when the rope broke
and he fell to the ground alive: “Mercy! mercy! they kill me without
cause! Oh, good Christians, protect me. Is there no Christian in this
land? _Muero innocente! Adios, para siempre adios!_”

A true tale this, every word of it, as are all the others in this
book, but lacking one essential thing to make it complete. There is
no mention in the diary of Captain Lincoln to bring us the comforting
assurance that Bolidar, the swaggering lieutenant, and his diminutive
blackguard of a chief received the solicitous attention of the hangman,
as they handsomely deserved.

CHAPTER III

THE TRAGEDY OF THE FRIGATE _MEDUSA_

Among the countless episodes of disaster at sea, the fate of the French
frigate _Medusa_ and her people still possesses a poignant and mournful
distinction. Other ships have gone down with much greater loss of life,
including such modern instances as the _Titanic_ and the _Lusitania_,
or have been missing with all hands, but the story of the _Medusa_
casts a dark shadow across the chronicles of human suffering, even
though a century has passed since the event. There are some enterprises
which seem foredoomed to failure by a conspiracy of circumstances, as
if a spell of evil enchantment had been woven to thwart and destroy
them. Of such a kind was this most unhappy voyage.

As an incident of the final overthrow of Napoleon, Great Britain
returned to France the colonial territory of Sénégal on the west
coast of Africa, between Cape Blanco and the Gambia River. A French
expedition was equipped and sent out to reoccupy and govern the
little settlements and clearings which thinly fringed the tropical
wilderness. It included officials, scientists, soldiers, servants, and
laborers, who sailed from Rochefort in the _Medusa_ frigate and three
smaller vessels on the seventeenth of June, 1816.

The French Navy had been shattered and swept from the seas by the
broadsides of Nelson’s fleets, and its morale had ebbed. This mission,
moreover, was not a strictly naval affair, and the personnel of the
frigate was recruited with no particular care. The seamen were the
scrapings of the waterfront, and the officers had not been selected for
efficiency. They were typical neither of the French arms nor people. It
seemed a commonplace task, no doubt, to sail with the summer breezes on
a voyage not much farther than the Cape Verd Islands and disembark the
passengers and cargo.

Captain de Chaumareys of the _Medusa_ was a light-hearted, agreeable
shipmate, but he appears to have been a most indifferent seaman and a
worse master of men and emergencies. When no more than ten days out
from port he discovered that his reckoning had set him thirty leagues,
or almost a hundred miles, out of his course. This was not enough to
condemn him utterly, because navigation was a crude art a century ago
and ships blundered about the high seas and found their way to port
in the most astonishing manner. But Captain de Chaumareys was not
made cautious by his error, and he drove along with fatuous confidence
in his ability and would pay no heed to the opinions of his officers.
He also managed to lose touch with the three smaller ships of the
squadron, and they vanished from his ken. It was one fatal mischance
after another.

On the first of July, when the frigate crossed the tropic of Cancer,
the debonair captain made it an excuse for a holiday and took personal
charge of the gaieties which so absorbed him that he turned over the
command of the ship to M. Richefort, one of the civilian officials who
had seen naval service. There was a feeling of uneasiness on board, for
all the fiddling and singing and dancing, and the officers discussed it
over their wine in the ward-room and the passengers were aware of it in
the cabins, “while the crew performed the fantastic ceremonies usual on
such occasions although the frigate was surrounded by all the unseen
perils of the ocean. A few persons, aware of the danger, remonstrated,
but without effect, even when it was ascertained that the _Medusa_ was
on the bank of Arguin.”

The ship was, in fact, entrapped among the shoals and reefs which
extended like a labyrinth far out from the African coast. It was an
area of many disasters to stout ships, whose crews had been taken
captive or killed by savage tribes, if they survived the hostility of
the sea. M. Richefort, who was so obligingly acting as commander of the
_Medusa_, insisted that there were a hundred fathoms of water under the
keel and not the slightest cause for anxiety, and they still danced on
deck to the scraping of the fiddles.

With a crash that flung the merry-makers this way and that, and brought
the spars tumbling about their ears, the _Medusa_ struck in only
sixteen feet of water, and the deadly sands had inextricably gripped
her. She was a lost ship on this bright day of calm seas and sunny
weather and the sailors blithely tripping it heel-and-toe. It was soon
realized that the frigate might pound to pieces in the first gale of
wind, and that advantage had best be taken of the quiescent ocean to
get away from her. The coast was known to be no more than forty miles
distant, and the hope of escape was strong.

There was ample time in which to abandon ship with some order and
method, to break out provisions and water-barrels, to build a number of
buoyant rafts and carefully equip them, to safeguard the lives of the
people as far as possible. The frigate carried carpenters, mechanics,
and other artisans, and all manner of tools for the colony of Sénégal.
Hundreds of people had been saved from other ships in situations
even more desperate than this. There had been strong men, unwavering
authority, and disciplined obedience in them, however, but this doomed
frigate was like a madhouse, and panic ran from deck to deck. The crew
was slack at best, but it could not be held altogether responsible for
the demoralization. The soldiers and laborers were Spanish, French,
Italian, and negroes, many of whom had probably been in prison or the
convict hulks, and were sent to Africa for their country’s good.

The frigate had five seaworthy boats, which were hurriedly launched and
filled with people whose only thought was to save their own skins. In
one of them was the governor of Sénégal and his family, and in another
were placed four children and the wives of the officials. In this
respect the ancient chivalry of the sea was lived up to. There were
heroes among the French army officers, as might have been expected, for
they kept clear of the struggle for the boats, and succeeded in holding
most of their men, who were assigned to the one raft which had been
frantically thrown together.

The five boats shoved off and waited for the raft, which it was
proposed to take in tow. Barrels of bread and wine and water had been
hoisted on deck, but in the confusion almost all the stores were
thrown into the boats. M. Correard, geographical engineer attached to
the expedition, had gallantly volunteered to take chances with his own
men on the raft. He had kept his wits about him, and delayed to ask
Captain de Chaumareys whether navigation instruments and charts had
been provided for the raft. He was assured that a naval officer was
attending to these essentials and would be in charge of the party.
Forgetting his duty entirely, this faithless officer scrambled into one
of the boats, and the raft was left without means of guidance.

There are cowards in all services, afloat and ashore, but they are
seldom conspicuous. Among those who fled away in the boats was the gay
Captain de Chaumareys, who oozed through a port-hole without delaying
a moment. In this manner he disappeared from the narrative, the last
glimpse of him as framed in the port-hole while his ship was still
crowded with terrified castaways for whom there were no boats. He was a
feather-brained poltroon who, by accident, happened to be a Frenchman.

[Illustration: BOATS WERE FILLED WITH MEN WHOSE ONLY THOUGHT WAS TO
SAVE THEIR SKINS]

There were intrepid men in the _Medusa_ who bullied the others into
helping make a raft. The best that they could do was to launch a
pitiful contrivance of spars and planks held together by lashings. It
was sixty-five feet long and twenty broad, 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 weather was still calm, and the ship rested solidly upon her sandy
bed, the upper decks clear of water. It seems incredible that no
barrels of beef and biscuit were lashed to the timbers of the raft,
no water-casks rolled from the tiers and swung overside. A kind of
mob hysteria swept these people along, and the men of resolution were
carried with it. They were unaccustomed to the sea, and a frenzied
fear of it stampeded them. The flimsy, wave-washed raft floated away
from the _Medusa_ with only biscuit enough for one scanty meal and a
few casks of wine. The stage was set, as one might say, for inevitable
horrors.

One of the boats which was not so crowded as the others had the grace
to row back to the ship with orders to take off a few, if there were
men still aboard. To the surprise of the lieutenant in the boat, sixty
men had been left behind because there was not even a foothold for them
upon the raft. The boat managed to stow all but seventeen of them, who
were very drunk by this time and preferred to stand by the ship and the
spirit-room. The fear of death had ceased to trouble them.

For the moment let us shift the scene to survey the fate of these
seventeen poor wretches who were abandoned on board of the _Medusa_.
The five boats reached the African coast and most of their company
lived to find Sénégal. The governor bethought himself that a large
amount of specie had been left in the wreck, and he sent a little
vessel off; but lack of provisions and bad weather drove her twice back
to port, so that fifty-two days, more than seven weeks, had passed
before the _Medusa_ was sighted, her upper works still above water.

Three of the seventeen men were found alive, “but they lived in
separate corners of the hulk and never met but to run at each other
with drawn knives.” Several others had sailed off on a tiny raft which
was cast up on the coast of the Sahara, but the men were drowned. A
lone sailor drifted away on a hencoop as the craft of his choice, and
foundered in sight of the frigate. All the rest had died of too little
food and too much rum, after the provisions had been lost or spoiled
by the breaking up of the ship.

It was understood that the raft, with its burden of one hundred and
fifty souls, was to be taken in tow by the five boats strung in a line,
and this flotilla would make for the nearest coast, which might have
been reached in two or three days of favoring weather. After a few
hours of slow, but encouraging, progress, the tow-line of the captain’s
boat parted. Instead of making fast to the raft again, all the other
boats cast off their cables and, under sail and oar, set off to the
eastward to save themselves. The miserable people who beheld this
desertion denounced it as an act of cruelty and perfidy beyond belief.
It may have been in the captain’s mind to make haste and send a vessel
to pick up the castaways, but his previous behavior had been such that
he scarcely deserves the benefit of the doubt.

On the makeshift raft there were those who knew how to die like
Frenchmen and gentlemen. What they endured has been handed down to
us in the personal accounts of M. Correard and M. Savigny, colonial
officials who wrote with that touch, vivid and dramatic, which is
the gift of many of their race. Even in translation it is profoundly
moving. When they saw the boats forsake them and vanish at the edge of
the azure horizon, a stupor fell upon these unfortunate people as they
clung to one another with arms locked and bodies pressed together so
that they might not be washed off the raft.

A small group in whom nobility of character burned like an unquenchable
flame assumed the leadership, attempting to maintain some sort of
discipline and decency, to ration the precious wine, to make the raft
more seaworthy. One of the artisans had a pocket compass, which he
displayed amid shouts of joy, but it slipped from his fingers and was
lost. They had no chart or any other resource of the kind.

“The first day passed in a manner sufficiently tranquil. We talked
of the means by which we would save ourselves; we spoke of it
as a certain circumstance, which reanimated our courage; and we
sustained that of the soldiers by cherishing in them the hope of
being able, in a short time, to revenge themselves on those who had
abandoned them.... In the evening our hearts and our prayers, by
a feeling natural to the unfortunate, were turned toward Heaven.
Surrounded by inevitable dangers, we addressed that invisible
Being who has established the order of the universe. Our vows were
fervent and we experienced from our prayers the cheering influence
of hope. It is necessary to have been in similar circumstances
before one can rightly imagine what a solace to the hearts of the
sufferers is the sublime idea of a God protecting the afflicted.”

Such were the reflections of a little group of devout and high-minded
Frenchmen whose example helped to steady the rest of the castaways
in the early hours of their ordeal. During the first night the wind
increased, and the sea became so boisterous that the waves gushed and
roared across the raft, most of which was three feet under water. A few
ropes were stretched for the people to cling to, but they were washed
to and fro, and many were caught and killed or cruelly hurt between the
grinding timbers. Others were swept into the sea. Twenty of the company
had perished before dawn. Two ship’s boys and a baker, after bidding
farewell to their comrades, threw themselves into the ocean as the
easier end. A survivor wrote:

“During the whole of this night we struggled against death, holding
ourselves closely to those spars which were firmly bound together;
tossed by the waves from one end to the other, and sometimes
precipitated into the sea; floating between life and death,
mourning over our misfortunes, certain of perishing, yet contending
for the remainder of existence with that cruel element which had
determined to swallow us up. Such was our situation till break of
day.”

Already the minds of some of the castaways were affected. When the
day came clear and beautiful, they saw visions of ships, of green
shores, of loved ones at home. While the ocean granted them a respite,
the emotion of hope strongly revived, and their manifold woes were
forgotten as they gazed landward or waited for sight of a sail.

“Two young men raised and recognized their father who had fallen
and was lying insensible among the feet of the soldiers. They
believed him to be dead and their despair was expressed in the
most affecting manner. He slowly revived and was restored to life
in response to the prayers of his sons who supported him closely
folded in their arms. This touching scene of filial piety drew our
tears.”

The second night again brought clouds and squally weather, which
agitated the ocean and swept the raft. In a wailing mass the people
were dashed to and fro and were crushed or drowned. The ruffianly
soldiers and sailors broached the wine-casks, and so lost such last
glimmerings of reason as terror had not deprived them of. They insanely
attacked the other survivors, and at intervals a battle raged all night
long, with sabers, knives, and bayonets. The brave M. Correard had
fallen into a swoon of exhaustion, but was aroused by the cries of “To
arms, comrades! Rally, or we are lost!” He mustered a small force of
loyal laborers and a few officers and led them in a charge. The rebels
surrounded them, but were beaten back after much bloodshed. The scenes
were thus depicted by the pen of M. Savigny:

The day had been beautiful and no one seemed to doubt that the
boats would appear in the course of it, to relieve us from our
perilous state; but the evening approached and none was seen.
From that moment a spirit of sedition spread from man to man, and
manifested itself by the most furious shouts. Night came on, the
heavens were obscured by thick clouds, the wind rose and with
it the sea. The waves broke over us every moment, numbers were
carried into the sea, particularly at the ends of the raft, and the
crowding towards the centre of it was so great that several poor
people were smothered by the pressure of their comrades who were
unable to keep their legs.

Firmly persuaded that they were all on the point of being drowned,
both soldiers and sailors resolved to soothe their last moments by
drinking until they lost their reason. Excited by the fumes acting
on empty stomachs and heads already disordered by danger, they
now became deaf to the voice of reason and boldly declared their
intention to murder their officers and then cut the ropes which
bound the raft together. One of them, seizing an axe, actually
began the dreadful work. This was the signal for revolt. The
officers rushed forward to quell the tumult and the mutineer with
the axe was the first to fall, his head split by a sabre.

The passengers joined the officers but the mutineers were still
the greater number. Luckily they were but badly armed, or the few
bayonets and sabres of the opposite party could not have kept them
at bay. One fellow, detected in secretly cutting the ropes, was
immediately flung overboard. Others destroyed the shrouds and
halliards of the sail, and the mast, deprived of support, fell upon
a captain of infantry and broke his thigh. He was instantly seized
by the soldiers and thrown into the sea, but the officers saved
him. A furious assault was now made upon the mutineers, many of
whom were cut down.

At length this fit of desperation subsided into weeping cowardice.
They cried out for mercy and asked for forgiveness upon their
knees. It was now midnight and order appeared to be restored, but
after an hour of deceitful calm the insurrection burst forth anew.
The mutineers ran upon the officers like madmen, each having a
knife or sabre in his hand, and such was the fury of the assailants
that they tore with their teeth the flesh and even the clothing
of their adversaries. There was no time for hesitation, a general
slaughter took place, and the raft was strewn with dead bodies.

There was one woman on the raft, and the villains had thrown her
overboard during the struggle, together with her husband, who had
heroically defended her. M. Correard, gashed with saber-wounds as
he was, leaped into the sea with a rope and rescued the wife, while
Lavilette, the head workman, swam after the husband and hauled him to
the raft.

[Illustration: THE BRIG, WHICH HAD MADE A LONG TACK AND WAS NOW
STEERING STRAIGHT TOWARD THE RAFT]

The first thing the poor woman did, after recovering her senses,
was to acquaint herself with the name of the person who had saved
her and to express to him her liveliest gratitude. Finding that
her words but ill reflected her feelings, she recollected that she
had in her pocket a little snuff and instantly offered it to him.
Touched with the gift but unable to use it, M. Correard gave it
to a wounded sailor, which served him two or three days. But it is
impossible to describe a still more affecting scene,--the joy this
unfortunate couple testified when they were again conscious, at
finding they were both saved.

The woman was a native of the Swiss Alps who had followed the armies of
France as a sutler, or vivandière, for twenty years, through many of
Napoleon’s campaigns. Bronzed, intrepid, facing death with a gesture,
she said to M. Correard:

I am a useful woman, you see, a veteran of great and glorious wars.
Therefore, if you please, be so good as to continue to preserve my
life. Ah, if you knew how often I have ventured upon the fields of
battle and braved the bullets to carry assistance to our gallant
men! Whether they had money or not, I always let them have my
goods. Sometimes a battle would deprive me of my poor debtors, but
after the victory others would pay me double or triple for what
they had consumed before the engagement. Thus I came in for a share
of the victories.

It was during a lull of the dreadful conflict among these pitiful
castaways that M. Savigny was moved to exclaim:

The moon lighted with her melancholy rays this disastrous raft,
this narrow space on which were found united so many torturing
anxieties, a madness so insensate, a courage so heroic, and the
most generous, the most amiable sentiments of nature and humanity.

Another night came, and the crazed mutineers made an attack even
more savage. It was not altogether impelled by the blind instinct of
survival, for again they tried to tear the raft apart and destroy
themselves with it. They were so many ravening beasts. Those who
resisted them displayed many instances of brave and beautiful
self-sacrifice. One of the loyal laborers was seized by four of the
rebels, who were about to kill him, but Lavilette, formerly a sergeant
of Napoleon’s Old Guard, rushed in and subdued them with the butt of a
carbine and so saved the victim of their rage.

A young lieutenant fell into the hands of these maniacs, and again
there were volunteers to rush in against overwhelming numbers and
effect a rescue, regardless of their grievous wounds. Bleeding and
exhausted, M. Coudin had fallen upon a barrel, but he still held in
his arms a twelve-year-old sailor-boy whom he was trying to shield
from harm. The rebels tossed them both into the sea, but M. Coudin
clung to the lad and insisted that he be placed upon the raft before he
permitted himself to be helped.

During these periods of hideous combat among men who should have been
brethren and comrades in tribulation, as many as sixty of them were
drowned or died of their wounds. Only two of these belonged to the
little party of finely tempered souls who had shown themselves to be
greatly heroic. They had withstood one onslaught after another, and
there were never more than twenty of them, in honor preferring one
another, untouched by the murderous delirium which had afflicted the
others.

True, they saw phantasms and talked wildly, but the illusions were
peaceful. M. Correard imagined that he was traveling through the
lovely, fruitful fields of Italy. One of the officers said to him,
quite calmly, “I recollect that we were abandoned by the boats, but
there is no cause for anxiety. I am writing a letter to the Government,
and in a few hours we shall be saved.” And while they were babbling
of the cafés of Paris and Bordeaux and ordering the most elaborate
meals, they chewed the leather of the shoulder-belts and cartridges,
and famine took its daily toll of them. In these circumstances it
was inevitable that sooner or later they would begin devouring one
another for food. The details are repugnant, and it is just as well to
pass over them. With this same feeling in mind, one of the survivors
confessed:

It was necessary, however, that some extreme measure should be
adopted to support our miserable existence. We shudder with horror
on finding ourselves under the necessity of recording that which
we put into practice. We feel the pen drop from our hands, a
deadly coldness freezes all our limbs, and our hair stands on
end. Readers, we entreat you not to entertain, for men already too
unhappy, a sentiment of indignation; but to grieve for them, and to
shed a tear of pity over their sad lot.

On the fourth day a dozen more had died, and the survivors were
“extremely feeble, and bore upon their faces the stamp of approaching
dissolution.” Shipwrecked crews have lived much longer than this
without food, but the situation of these sufferers was peculiarly
dreadful. And yet one of them could say:

This day was serene and the ocean slumbered. Our hearts were in
harmony with the comforting aspect of the heavens and received anew
a ray of hope. A shoal of flying fish passed under our raft and as
there was an infinite number of openings between the pieces which
composed it, the fish were entangled in great numbers. We threw
ourselves upon them and took about two hundred and put them in an
empty barrel. This food seemed delicious, but one man would have
required a score. Our first emotion was to give thanks to God for
this unhoped for favor.

An ounce of gunpowder was discovered, and the sunshine dried it,
so that with a steel and gun-flints a fire was kindled in a wetted
cask and some of the little fish were cooked. This was the only food
vouchsafed them, a mere shadow of substance among so many, “but the
night was made tolerable and might have been happy if it had not been
signalized by a new massacre.”

A mob of Spaniards, Italians, and negroes had hatched a plot to throw
all the others into the sea and so obtain the raft and what wine was
left. The black men argued that the coast was near and that they could
traverse it without danger from the natives and so act as guides. The
leader of this outbreak was a Spaniard, who placed himself behind the
mast, made the sign of the cross with one hand, waved a knife in the
other, and invoked the name of God as the signal to rush forward and
begin the affray. Two faithful French sailors, who were forewarned
of this eruption, lost not a moment in grappling with this devout
desperado, and he was thrown into the sea along with an Asiatic of
gigantic stature who was suspected of being another ringleader. A third
instigator of the mob, perceiving that the plot was discovered, armed
himself with a boarding-ax, hacked his way free, and plunged into the
ocean.

The rest of the mutineers were hardier lunatics, and they fought wildly
in the attempt to kill one of the officers, under the delusion that he
was a Lieutenant Danglass, whom they had hated for his harsh manners
while aboard the _Medusa_. At length they were repulsed, but when the
morning came only thirty persons remained alive of the one hundred
and fifty who had left the frigate. Occasional glimpses of reason
prevailed, as when two soldiers were caught in the act of stealing
wine from the only cask left, and were put to death after a summary
courtmartial conducted with singular regard for form and ceremony.

Among those who mercifully passed out at the end of a week was the
twelve-year-old sailor-boy, whose name was Leon. M. Savigny describes
it so tenderly that the passage is worth quoting:

He died like a lamp which ceases to burn for want of aliment. All
spoke in favor of this young and amiable creature who merited a
better fate. His angelic form, his musical voice, the interest
inspired by an age so infantile, increased still more by the
courage he had shown and the services he had performed, (for he
had already made a campaign in the East Indies), moved us all with
the deepest pity for this young victim. Our old soldiers, and all
the people in general, did everything they could to prolong his
existence. Neither the wine of which they deprived themselves
without regret, nor all the other means they employed, could arrest
his melancholy doom.

He expired in the arms of his friend, M. Coudin, who had not ceased
to give him the most unwearied attention. Whilst he had strength to
move he ran incessantly from one side to the other, loudly calling
for his mother, for water and for food. He trod upon the feet and
legs of his wounded companions who in their turn uttered cries of
anguish, but these were rarely mingled with threats or reproaches.
They freely pardoned all that the poor little lad caused them to
suffer.

When the number of the living was reduced to twenty-seven, a solemn
discussion was held, and a conclusion reached upon which it is not
for us to pass judgment. It was evident that fifteen of the number
were likely to live a few days longer, which gave them a tangible hope
of rescue. The other twelve were about to die, all of them severely
wounded and bereft of reason. There was still some wine in the last
cask. To divide it with these doomed twelve was to deprive the fifteen
stronger men of the chance of survival. It was decided to give these
dying people to the merciful obliteration of the sea. The execution of
this decree was undertaken by three soldiers and a sailor, chosen by
lot, while the others wept and turned away their faces.

Among those whose feeble spark of life was snuffed out in this manner
was that militant woman, the sutler who had followed Napoleon to the
plains of Italy. Both she and her husband had been fatally wounded
during the last night of the mutiny, and so they went out of life
together, which was as they would have wished it. More than once in war
the hopelessly wounded have been put out of the way in preference to
leaving them in the wake of a retreat or burdening a column with them.
In this tragedy of the sea the decision was held to be justifiable
when the French Government investigated the circumstances.

With so few of them remaining, the fifteen survivors were able to
assemble themselves upon a little platform raised in the center of the
raft and to build a slight protection of plank and spars. To rehearse
their sufferings at greater length would be to repel the modern reader.
It is only in fiction that shipwreck can be employed as a theme for
romance and enjoyable adventure. The reality is apt to be very stark
and grim. It is more congenial to remember such fine bits as this, when
the handful of them huddled upon the tiny platform in the final days of
their agony:

On this new theatre we resolved to meet death in a manner becoming
Frenchmen and with perfect resignation. Our time was almost wholly
spent in talking of our beloved and unhappy country. All our
wishes, our prayers, were for the prosperity of France.

It was the gallant M. Correard who assured his comrades that his
presentiment of rescue was still unshaken, that a series of events so
unheard of could not be destined to oblivion and that Providence would
certainly preserve a few to tell to the world the melancholy story of
the raft. In the bottom of a sack were found thirty cloves of garlic,
which were distributed as a precious alleviation, and there was
rejoicing over a little bottle of tooth-wash containing cinnamon and
aromatics. A drop of it on the tongue produced an agreeable feeling,

and for a short time removed the thirst which destroyed us. Thus
we sought with avidity an empty vial which one of us possessed and
in which had once been some essence of roses. Every one, as he
got hold of it, respired with delight the odor it exhaled, which
imparted to his senses the most soothing impressions. Emaciated by
privations, the slightest comfort was to us a supreme happiness.

On the ninth day they saw a butterfly of a species familiar to the
gardens of France, and it fluttered to rest upon the mast. It was a
harbinger of land and an omen of deliverance in their wistful sight.
Other butterflies visited them, but the winds and currents failed to
set them in close to the coast, and there was never a glimpse of a
sail. They existed in quietude, with no more brawls or mutinies, until
sixteen days had passed since the wreck of the _Medusa_. Then a captain
of infantry, scanning the sea with aching eyes, saw the distant gleam
of canvas.

Soon they were able to perceive that it was a brig, and they took it
to be the _Argus_ of their own squadron, which they had been hoping
would be sent in search of them. They made a flag out of fragments
of clothing, and a seaman climbed to the top of the mast and waved it
until his strength failed. The vessel grew larger through half an hour
of tears and supplication, and then its course was suddenly altered,
and it dropped below the sky-line.

Despair overwhelmed them. They laid themselves down under a covering of
sail-cloth and refused to glance at the ocean which had mocked them.
It was proposed to write their names and a brief account of their
experience upon a plank and affix it to the mast on the chance that the
tidings might some day reach their government and their families in
France.

It was the master gunner who crawled out, two hours later, and
trembled as he stared at the brig which had made a long tack and was
now steering straight toward the raft. The others dragged themselves
to their feet, forgetting their sores and wounds and weakness, and
embraced one another. From the foremast of the brig flew an ensign,
which they joyously recognized, and they cried, as you might have
expected of them, “It is, then, to Frenchmen that we shall owe our
deliverance.”

The _Argus_, which had been sent out by the governor of Sénégal,
rounded to no more than a pistol-shot from the raft while the crew
“ranged upon the deck and in the shrouds announced to us by the waving
of their hands and hats, the pleasure they felt at coming to the
assistance of their unfortunate countrymen.”

Fifteen men were taken on board the brig of the hundred and fifty
who had shoved away from the frigate _Medusa_ a little more than a
fortnight earlier. There was no more fiddling and dancing on deck for
“these helpless creatures almost naked, their bodies shrivelled by
the rays of the sun, ten of them scarcely able to move, their limbs
stripped of skin, their eyes hollow and almost savage, and the long
beards giving them an air almost hideous.”

They were most tenderly cared for by the surgeon of the _Argus_, but
six of them died after reaching the African port of St. Louis. Only
nine of the castaways of the _Medusa’s_ raft, therefore, lived to
return to France. Their minds and bodies were marked with the scars
of that experience, which you will find mentioned very frequently in
the old records of shipwreck and disaster. It was an episode in human
history, the best and the worst of it, and a reminder of man’s eternal
conflict with the sea.

CHAPTER IV

THE WRECK OF THE _BLENDEN HALL_, EAST INDIAMAN

In this harassing modern age of a world turned upside down and
bedeviled with one more problem after another, fancy turns with fond
regret to those lucky sailormen who lingered on little, sea-girt isles
and lorded it as monarchs of all they surveyed. Many an old forecastle
had a _Robinson Crusoe_, hairy and brown and tattooed, who could spin
strange yarns of years serenely passed among the untutored natives of
the Indian Ocean or the South Seas. Now and then one of them had lived
in more solitary fashion on some remote, unpeopled strand, a hermit
cast up by the sea, and was actually contented because he had freed
himself of the tyranny of bosses and wages and trousers and all the
other shackles of civilization.

Alas! there are no more realms like these. The wireless mast lifts
above the palm-trees, and the steamer whistle blows to recall the
tourists from the beaches where the trade-winds sweep. There are still
some very lonely places on the watery globe, however, and one of them
is the tiny group of three volcanic islands in the South Atlantic
which is known as Tristan da Cunha. These bleak rocks lie two thousand
miles west of the Cape of Good Hope and four thousand miles to the
northeast of Cape Horn. They loom abruptly from a tempestuous ocean,
which lashes the stark, black cliffs, and there are no harbors, only an
occasional fringe of beach a few yards wide.

Tristan, the largest of the group, lifts a snow-clad peak almost eight
thousand feet above the sea as a warning to mariners to steer wide of
the cruel reefs. It has a small plateau where green things grow, and
living streams and cascades of fresh water. The islands were discovered
as early as 1506 by the Portuguese admiral, Tristan da Cunha, and in
later years the Dutch navigators and the pioneers of the British East
India Company hove to in passing, but it was not thought worth while to
hoist a flag over the group.

It remained for a Yankee sailor, Jonathan Lambert of Salem, to
choose Tristan da Cunha as his abiding-place and to issue a formal
proclamation of his sovereignty to the other nations of the world. Said
he, “I ground my right and claim on the sure and rational ground of
absolute occupancy.” This was undeniable, and the British Empire rests
upon foundations no more convincing. Jonathan Lambert was of the breed
of Salem seafarers who had first carried the American flag to India,
Java, Sumatra, and Japan, who opened the trade with the Fiji Islands
and Madagascar, who had been the trail-breakers in diverting the
commerce of South America and China to Yankee ships. They had sailed
where no other merchantmen dared go, they had anchored where no one
else dreamed of seeking trade.

It was therefore nothing extraordinary for Jonathan Lambert to tire
of roving the wide seas and to set himself up in business as the king
of Tristan da Cunha which had neither ruler nor subjects. What his
ambitions were and how a melancholy end overtook them is to be found
in the sea-journal of Captain John White, who sailed the American brig
_Franklin_ out to China in 1819. He wrote:

On March 12th we saw and passed the island of Tristan da Cunha
which was taken possession of in 1810 by Jonathan Lambert. He
published a document setting forth his rights to the soil and
invited navigators of all nations whose routes might lie near that
ocean to touch at his settlement for supplies which he anticipated
his industry would draw from the earth and the adjacent sea. He
signified his readiness to receive in payment for his produce,
which consisted of vegetables, fruit and fish, whatever might be
convenient for the visitors to part with which could be in any way
useful to him.

In order to carry out his plan, Jonathan Lambert took with him
to the island various implements of husbandry, seeds of the most
useful plants, tropical trees for transplanting, etc. After he had
been on his island for about two years it was apparent that his
efforts would be crowned with success, but unfortunately he was
drowned, with his one associate, while visiting one of the nearby
islands.

Another adventurous seaman, Thomas Currie, succeeded to this lonely
principality by right of occupation, and was joined by two others. They
lived contentedly and raised wheat and oats and pigs until in the War
of 1812 the American naval vessels began to use Tristan da Cunha as a
base from which to harry British commerce in the South Atlantic. Then
Great Britain formally annexed the group, and kept a garrison of a
hundred men there for two years.

When the garrison was withdrawn, Corporal William Glass of the Royal
Artillery was left behind at his own request, with his wife and
children, and two privates decided to join him as the beginnings of a
colony. A few other rovers or shipwrecked sailors drifted to Tristan
da Cunha from time to time, and they found girls at St. Helena and
Cape Town who were willing to marry them, so that there was created
a peaceful, unworldly little community on this far-away island over
which Corporal William Glass ruled as a wise and benevolent patriarch.

The _Blenden Hall_ was a stout ship bound out from England to Bombay
in 1820, an East Indiaman of the stately fleet that flew the house
flag of the Honorable Company. Their era was soon to pass, with all
its color and romance, the leisurely voyage, the ceremonious formality
and discipline, the pleasant sociability. The swifter Yankee merchant
ships, hard driven under clouds of cotton duck, used to rush past these
jogging East India “tea-wagons,” which shortened sail at sunset and
snugged down for the night. They carried crews for a man-of-war, what
with the midshipmen, the purser, the master-at-arms, the armorer, the
calker, the butcher, baker, poulterer, gunner’s mates, sail-maker, six
officers to assist the commander, and Indian servants to wait on them.

The passengers enjoyed more comfort and luxury in these handsome old
sailing ships than the modern reader might suppose. The cabins were
much more spacious than the liner’s state-rooms of to-day, the saloon
was ornate with rugs and teakwood, with silver plate and the finest
napery, and dinner was an elaborate affair, with a band of music, and
the commander and the officers in the Company’s dress uniform of blue
coat and gold buttons, with waistcoats and breeches of buff. Wines,
ale, beer, and brandy were served without cost to the passengers,
and the large staff of cooks and stewards was able to find in the
storerooms and pantries such a varied stock of provisions as beef,
pork, bacon, and tongues, bread, cheese, butter, herrings, and salmon,
confectionery, oatmeal, oranges, and dried and preserved fruits, while
a live cow or two supplied cream for the coffee, and the hen-coops
stowed in the long-boat contributed fresh eggs.

The _Blenden Hall_ was commanded by Captain Alexander Greig, a sailor
and a gentleman of the old school, who had laid by a comfortable
fortune during his long service. The trading ventures and perquisites
of the master of an East Indiaman often yielded an income which a
modern bank president would view with profound respect. The captain’s
son, young Alexander Greig, sailed as a passenger on this last voyage
of the _Blenden Hall_. He was a high-spirited lad, bound out to join
the army in India, and life was one zestful adventure after another.
The modern youngster may well envy him his luck in being shipwrecked on
a desert island, where he wrote a diary, using penguin’s blood for ink
and quill feathers for pens.

If the tale were fiction instead of fact, the beginning could be no
more auspiciously romantic.

Captain Greig and his son left their English country home in their
“travelling carriage” for the journey to Gravesend to join the ship.
While crossing Bexley Heath they made their pistols ready, for the
stretch of road was notorious for highwaymen, and as young Alexander
Greig enjoyably tells us:

I soon observed that my father’s attention had been attracted
by two horsemen riding across the Heath at full gallop, and
notwithstanding the postilion was evidently exerting himself to
outstrip our pursuers, they appeared to gain fast upon us. And in
fifteen minutes they called loudly to him to stop, one of them at
the same time discharging a pistol to bring us to. My father, after
urging the postilion to drive faster (and we seemed then almost to
fly across the Heath) told me to be prepared to receive the man on
the left, “for,” said he, “we will give them a warm reception, at
any rate.”

I was just about to follow his advice when I fancied that the men
allowed us to gain ground and were out of pistol-shot, as I could
see them curbing their horses while they discussed the prudence of
keeping up the pursuit. It was fortunate for them that they did so,
for one of them would have received the contents of my Joe Manton,
as I was resolved not to fire till he came so close to the carriage
that I could make sure of my man.

At the next tavern they described the adventure, and when young Greig
mentioned that one of the rascals wore a red waistcoat with white
stripes, the landlord exclaimed:

“Jem Turner, by the Lord Harry! Aye, as sure as fate! There is two
hundred pounds reward for him, dead or alive. The boldest rascal that
rides the Heath!”

Captain Greig concluded, no doubt, that he was safer at sea again. The
_Blenden Hall_ was ready to sail, and several of her passengers came
on board at Gravesend, while the others were taken on from Deal while
the ship tarried in the Downs. Sixteen in all were of a social station
which permitted them to meet at the cuddy table for dinner while the
ship’s band played “The Roast Beef of Old England” and Captain Greig
pledged their health in good Madeira. With a most precocious taste
for gossip, young Greig managed to portray his fellow-voyagers in an
intimate manner that would be hard to match in the true tales of the
sea.

It is just as well to let you gain some slight acquaintance with them
before the curtain rises on the tragedy of the shipwreck. The most
conspicuous figure was Mrs. Lock, wife of a commodore somewhere on
foreign service. She was very fat, with a hurricane of a temper, and
of mixed blood in which the tar brush was undeniable. Her English
was badly broken, and her manners were startling. She had been the
commodore’s cook in his Indian bungalow, so the rumor ran, until for
reasons inscrutable he decided to marry her. Such a person was enough
to set the ship’s society by the ears. Social caste and station were
matters of immense importance. The emotions of Dr. Law, a fussy old
bachelor of a half-pay naval surgeon, were quite beyond words, although
he was heard to mutter:

“A vulgar black woman, by Jove! And, damme, she flung her arms around
me when she was taken seasick at table.”

There was also consternation among such exclusive persons as Captain
Miles, and six assistant surgeons in the Honorable Company’s military
service, Major Reid of the Poonah Auxiliary Forces, and Quartermaster
Hormby and his lady, of his Majesty’s foot. The dignified commander of
the _Blenden Hall_ felt it necessary to explain that passage for the
chocolate-hued spouse of the erring commodore had been obtained under
false pretenses. As if this were not enough, another social shock was
in store.

Lieutenant Painter, a bluff, good-humored naval man, had come on board
at Gravesend. While the ship was anchored in the Downs, he was one
of the passengers who asked the captain to set them ashore in the
cutter for a stroll in Deal. When they returned to the boat, Lieutenant
Painter was missing. Nothing whatever was heard of him for two days,
and Captain Greig felt seriously alarmed. Then a boatman brought off a
letter in which the gallant lieutenant explained that he had been

most actively engaged not only in beginning but in finishing a
courtship and that it was his intention to join the ship before
dinner when he would do himself the honor to introduce Mrs. Painter
to the captain and passengers. He requested that a larger cabin
could be prepared, in which he could “stow away his better half.”

There was great excitement and curiosity in the cuddy of the _Blenden
Hall_ as the dinner-hour drew near. The impetuous romance of the
brisk Lieutenant Painter was sensational. At length a boat was pulled
alongside, and a chair rigged and lowered from the lofty deck. The
boatswain piped, and the lovely burden was safely hoisted to the poop,
followed by the beaming lieutenant, who scrambled up the gangway. First
impressions were favorable. The bride was young and handsome. Her
physical charms were so robust, however, that she stood a foot taller
than her bantam of a husband, and the audience was amused when she
grasped his arm and heartily exclaimed:

“Come, little Painter, let me see this fine cabin of yours.”

It was soon perceived that the vigorous Mrs. Painter _was not a lady_.
The dreadful truth was not revealed, however, until a grizzled Deal
boatman was discovered lingering at the gangway. When one of the mates
asked him his errand, he answered:

“Why, I only want to say goodbye to my gel, Bet, but I suppose the
gold-buttoned swab of a leftenant has turned her ’ead. Blowed if I
reckoned my own darter ’ud forget me.”

Hiding in her cabin, the daughter wished to avoid such a farewell
scene, but she could hear the old man ramble on:

“She ’as no occasion to feel ashamed of her father. I’ve been a Deal
boatman these fifty years and brought up a large family respectably, as
Captain Greig well knows.”

At this the emotional Mrs. Painter rushed on deck to embrace her humble
sire and weep in his gray whiskers, a scene which the fastidious
passengers found too painful to witness. Henceforth, through varied
scenes of shipwreck and suffering, the dominant figures were to be
the youthful, upstanding Mrs. Painter and the dusky and corpulent
Mrs. Lock, heroines of two rash marriages, and foreordained to hate
each other with a ferocity which not even the daily fear of death
could diminish. In the presence of such protagonists as these, the
ship’s company was like a Greek chorus. There was something almost
superb in such a feminine feud. It was no peevish quarrel over the
tea-cups. Moreover, it could have no dull moments, because both women
had vocabularies of singular force and emphasis. The forecastle of the
_Blenden Hall_ could do no better in its most lurid moments.

It began with an affectionate intimacy, then squalls and
reconciliations, while the stately East Indiaman jogged to the
southward and the band played on deck for dancing after dinner. How far
these two stormy women were responsible must be left to conjecture, but
there seems to have been a vast deal of squabbling and bad blood among
the passengers, as indicated by the following entry in the journal of
young Alexander Greig, the captain’s son:

Although I endeavored to detach myself, as much as possible, from
any particular party (by giving two entertainments a week in my
private cabin and sending around a general invitation) I received
one or two polite requests to meet the writers at the first port
we might touch at and to grant them the satisfaction due from
one gentleman to another, &c., &c., for alleged affronts that
I had unconsciously committed. For the life of me I could not
have defined what the affronts were, but I wrote each party an
answer that I should be happy to accept, and then deposited their
beautiful gilt-edged little notes in my desk.

There was an occasional diversion which patched up a truce, such as
meeting with an armed brig which was suspected to be a pirate. The
chief officer, in the mizzen-rigging with a telescope, shouted down
that the brig was cleared for action. The second mate rushed forward
and yelled to the boatswain to pipe all hands on deck. The gunner
served out pistols and cutlasses to the seamen and the passengers,
boarding-pikes were stacked along the heavy bulwarks, and the battery
of six eighteen-pounders was loaded with grape and canister. Things
looked even more serious when the brig hauled down a British ensign and
tacked to get the weather gage of the East Indiaman.

Some of the passengers were frightened, and others professed an
eagerness to engage in a “set-to.” Dr. Law, the half-pay naval surgeon,
strode the deck with a drawn sword. He was filled with valor and Scotch
whisky, and offered to wager any man a hundred guineas that he would
be the first to board the enemy. Mrs. Commodore Lock waddled about
uttering loud lamentations, and vowed that a friend of hers had been
eaten alive by pirates. Nightfall closed down, however, before the brig
could overtake the _Blenden Hall_, which surged before the wind with
studding-sails spread.

Captain Greig was in some doubt as to his reckoning, because of thick
weather, when the ship had entered the lonely expanse of the South
Atlantic, and he therefore steered for a sight of Tristan da Cunha in
order to make certain of his position. He proceeded cautiously, but
soon after breakfast, on July 23, 1820, breakers were descried close
at hand. The wind died, and the ship was drifting. Anchors were let
go, but the water was too deep to find holding-ground, and a dense
fog obscured the sea. The ship struck in breakers so violent that
the decks were swept, the boats smashed, and the houses filled with
water. The masts were promptly cut away, but the _Blenden Hall_ was
rapidly pounding to death with a broken back. All hands rushed forward
and crowded upon the forecastle just before the rest of the ship was
wrenched asunder and floated away.

Two seamen had been killed by falling spars, but all the rest of the
ship’s company, eighty souls of them, were alive and praying for
rescue. After several hours of misery, a few sailors managed to knock
a raft together and so reached the shore, which had disclosed itself
as frightfully forbidding and desolate. The ship had been wrecked among
the reefs of Inaccessible Island, one of the Tristan da Cunha group.
By a sort of miracle the bow of the ship finally detached itself from
among the rocks and washed toward the tiny strip of beach. Clinging
to the stout timbers of the forecastle, all the survivors were safely
delivered from the terrors of the sea.

Through the first night they could only shiver in the rain and wonder
what fate had befallen them. At dawn they began to explore the island,
which appeared to be no more than a gigantic rock, black and savage,
which towered into the clouds. Fresh water was found, but hunger
menaced them. The first bit of flotsam from the wreck was a case of
“Hibbert’s Celebrated Bottled Porter,” which was a beverage with a kick
to it, and for the moment life looked not quite so dismal. On the beach
were huge sea-lions, creatures twenty feet in length, but there was
no way to slay and use them for food. Many sea-birds were killed with
clubs and eaten raw, which postponed famine for the time.

And now there floated ashore bales of red broadcloth, which was
promptly cut up for clothing. It was grotesque to see the sailors and
passengers parading in gorgeous tunics and robes of crimson, with
white turbans fashioned from bolts of muslin. With bamboo-poles, also
washed from the ship, Captain Greig set his men to making tents for the
women. There was very little material, however, and most of the people
sat around in a sort of wretched stupor, drenched, benumbed, hopeless.
Several barrels of strong liquors came rolling in with the surf, and
the sailors, of course, drank all they could hold. One of them, an
old barnacle named John Dulliver, showed a streak of marked sagacity.
After tapping a barrel of Holland gin and guzzling to the limit of his
stowage space, he stove in one end, emptied the barrel, and crawled
snugly into it to slumber. This seemed such a brilliant notion that as
fast as the ship’s water-barrels drifted ashore they were tenanted by
castaways who resembled so many hermit-crabs.

For six days the party forlornly existed in continuous rain, with no
means of kindling a fire, and eating raw pork that was cast up by
the sea and such birds as they could obtain. Then a case of surgical
instruments was found on the beach, and it contained a providential
flint and steel. Fire was made, and spears were contrived of poles,
with knives lashed to them, so that the monstrous sea-lions could be
killed and used for food. There were millions of penguins, and their
eggs could be had for the gathering. It was hard, revolting fare, but
other castaways had lived for months and even years on food no worse,
and the horrors of famine were averted.

Captain Greig was taken ill, and his authority therefore amounted to
little. His officers were not the men for such a crisis as this, and
they do not appear to have been able to master it. The sailors were
insolent and lazy, no doubt of it, and young Mr. Greig devotes many
pages of his diary to abuse of them. It is quite evident, however, that
the officers and passengers felt themselves to be superior beings and
expected the sailors to wait on them as menials. In such a situation
as this one man was as good as another, and the doctrines of caste
and rank properly belonged in the discard. It was rather pitiful and
absurd, as one catches glimpses of it in the ingenuous narrative of the
very young Mr. Greig.

For a few days after the wreck it was hail fellow, well met, but
Jack, once put upon an equality, began to take unwarrantable
liberties, and as familiarity is generally the forerunner of
contempt, so it proved in this case. Quarrels soon began and
the passengers now took the opposite course of attempting to
issue orders to the sailors and treating them as servants. This
exasperated the crew and they swore that no earthly power should
ever induce them to render the least assistance to the passengers.
Large sums of money were offered the sailors to forage for
provisions, but I am firmly persuaded that the man who accepted
such an offer would have been murdered by his comrades. Mrs. Lock,
for instance, incensed a seaman by telling him,--“You common
sailor, why you no wait on lady? You ought to wait on officer’s
lady! You refuse me, captain will flog you plenty.”

Inaccessible Island was properly named, and one week after another
passed without the sight of a sail or any tangible hope of rescue.
Flimsy shelters were contrived, and nobody died of cold or hunger,
but they were a gaunt, unkempt company, with much illness among them.
Arrayed in their makeshift garments of crimson broadcloth, the camp
was more like a travesty than a tragedy. No hardship could dull the
militant spirits of Mrs. Commodore Lock and that young and handsome
virago, Mrs. Lieutenant Painter. During one of their clashes, which was
about to come to blows, the little lieutenant was trying to drag his
strapping spouse into their tent while several passengers laid hold of
the ponderous Mrs. Lock. Poor Captain Greig was heard to murmur:

“Thank God we have almost no respectable ladies with us to witness such
scenes as these!”

Mrs. Lock had two small children with her, and it pleased the fancy
of Mrs. Painter to say that, in her opinion, the paternity of the
offspring would have been better established if the commodore had
offered marriage a few years earlier. Mrs. Painter put it even more
forcefully than this. At the deadly insult Mrs. Lock broke out in
impassioned accents:

“What you think? That vile hussy of a Painter woman, she say me
no Commodore Lock’s wife. Me lose my--what you call it--wedding
’tifcate on board ship, so me no have proof now--but when we come
to Bombay, my commodore he kicks dirty little Painter out of the
service, and me get ten thousand rupees of defamation damage. That
Painter woman’s father am a common, dirty boatman!”

At this Mrs. Painter, with lofty disdain, let fall the remark: “Behold
the she-devil and her two little imps!”

The sailors felt so little respect for the commodore’s wife that one of
them coarsely observed, within her hearing:

“If we run short of them penguins’ eggs, Bill, and there ain’t nothin’
else to eat, we’ll pop the old girl’s young ’uns into the pot for a bit
of broth.”

This was reported to Captain Greig by the explosive Mrs. Lock, who
declared that the sailors had called her names much stronger than “old
girl.” The chivalrous commander was resolved that no man of his crew
should insult a woman and go unpunished, wherefore he mustered the
seamen loyal to him, and they maintained order while the boatswain gave
the chief offender fifty lashes on the bare back with a rope’s-end. The
dreary exile was further enlivened by the discovery that Lieutenant
Painter’s tent had been robbed of jewelry and other valuables. A formal
trial was held, with young Alexander Greig as judge and a water-cask
as the official bench. A sailor named Joseph Fowler was accused of the
theft, and Mrs. Lock surged into the proceedings by announcing that, in
her opinion, the relations of Mrs. Painter and this common sailorman
had been a public scandal.

“Very ladylike of you, I’m sure, Mrs. Lock,” cried Mrs. Painter, “but
what could a person expect?”

Such episodes as these were trivial when compared with the tragic
problem of survival and escape from Inaccessible Island. Exploring
parties had climbed the lofty peak, and in clear weather were able to
discern the snow-clad summit of the larger island of Tristan, only
fifteen miles distant, which was known to be inhabited. It might have
been a thousand miles away, however, for the lack of tools and material
had discouraged any efforts to build a boat. In a mood of despair a
flagstaff was set up on the southwestern promontory, which faced the
open ocean, and a bottle tied to it which contained this message:

On the N. W. side of this island are the remaining part of the crew
and passengers of the _Blenden Hall_, wrecked 23rd July, 1821.
Should this fall into the hands of the humane, we trust, by the
assistance of God, they will do all in their power to relieve us,
and the prayers of many unfortunate sufferers will always be for
them.

Signed,
ALEXANDER GREIG, _Commander_.

This was a month after the shipwreck. Another month passed, and the
ship’s cook, Joseph Nibbs, a colored man, had begun to build a clumsy
little cockle-shell which he called a punt. For tools he managed to
find a hand-saw, a chisel, a bolt for a hammer, and a heavy iron hinge
ground sharp on the rocks for an ax. It seems extraordinary that
this enterprise should have been left to a sea-cook, what with the
carpenter and all the officers who should have taken the initiative.
At any rate, this handy Joseph Nibbs pegged his boat together and went
fishing in it. This appears to have shamed the others into activity,
and the carpenter set about building a larger boat. It was the heroic
cook, however, who decided to risk the voyage to Tristan in his little
floating coffin, and his farewell speech was reported as follows:

[Illustration: GOVERNOR GLASS AND HIS RESIDENCE]

“I little thought, Captain Greig, ever to see this day; but I will
bring relief to you and young Mr. Alexander, if I perish in the
attempt. If I never see you again, sir, God bless you for your kindness
to me during the years we have been shipmates.”

In the punt with the cook went five volunteers, three able seamen, the
gunner, and the sail-maker, but not one of the ship’s officers. These
six fine fellows were ready to risk their lives for others, but the
quarter-deck failed to share in the splendid action. The punt hoisted
sail, the cook and his comrades shouted three cheers, and they stood
out from the lee of the island to face a heavy sea. This was the last
ever seen of them. They must have perished soon after.

The castaways waited week after week, desperately hungry and wholly
discouraged. Meanwhile the carpenter had finished his boat, but delayed
his voyage until certain of fine weather, and wasted much time in
skirting the island in the hope of finding some trace of the cook. It
was late in October, almost three months after the loss of the _Blenden
Hall_, before the carpenter attempted to reach Tristan. Nine men were
with him, five able seamen, the boatswain, the steward, a boatswain’s
mate, and a carpenter’s mate. Again the list was conspicuous for the
absence of an officer.

On the following day two boats were seen approaching Inaccessible
Island. They were stanch whale-boats, in one of which was the ruler of
Tristan da Cunha, Corporal William Glass, late of the Royal Artillery.
He brought provisions and a warm welcome to his kingdom. It was found
that more than one trip would be necessary to transport the castaways
to Tristan. In the first boat-load were Mrs. Lock and Mrs. Painter,
whose animosities were lulled by the blessed fact of rescue. It was
an armistice during which they wept on each other’s necks and mingled
their prayers of thanksgiving while the crew of the _Blenden Hall_ sang
“God Save the King.”

All hands were safely landed at Tristan where they found a neat hamlet
of stone cottages thatched with straw, and green fields of grain and
potatoes. Mrs. Glass was the only woman of the colony in which there
were five Englishmen and two American sailors. To provide for eighty
shipwrecked people severely taxed their resources but the spirit
of hospitality was most cordially displayed. The captain and the
passengers signed an agreement to pay Governor Glass at the rate of
two shillings and sixpence per day for board and lodging, which was
no more than fair, but nothing was said about the sailors. They were
expected to pay for their keep by working as farm-hands. This rubbed
the long-suffering tars the wrong way, and as the diary explains it:

“The passengers walking about at their ease was a sight to which
Jack could not long submit; at last they all struck, declaring that
they would not work unless their ‘mortal enemies’ were compelled
to do the same. Upon this, the captain begged Governor Glass to be
firm with them and on no account to serve out any provisions unless
they returned to their duty. Consequently several meetings with a
great deal of ill feeling took place upon the subject, and when
prayers were read the following Sunday at Government House, every
sailor absented himself.”

Food was refused the striking seamen until they threatened to break
into the potato sheds and then burn the settlement. The boatswain and
his lash tamed the mutiny after Joseph Fowler had been tied up and his
back cut to ribbons with _nine dozen_ blows of the rope’s-end. After
this the seamen marched off to another part of the island and fed
themselves by fishing and hunting wild goats and pigs. To their simple
minds there was no good reason why they should sweat at building stone
walls and digging potatoes while Captain Miles and the six assistant
surgeons of the Honorable East India Company, Major Reid of the Poonah
Auxiliary Forces, and Quartermaster Hormby of his Majesty’s foot were
strolling about in idleness.

For lack of something better to do, the passengers began to find
fault with the food supplied by the worthy Governor Glass, and this
caused much difficulty and several formal conferences and protests. He
promised to do better, and honestly tried to, bearing the situation
with unfailing good humor and courtesy. If the rations were scrimped,
it was no doubt because he feared he might be eaten out of house and
home and left without reserve supplies.

On New Year’s day there was a notable celebration, when the four
children of the Glass family were formally christened by Dr. Hatch of
the _Blenden Hall_, who had taken holy orders in his youth. Governor
Glass wore his scarlet uniform of the Royal Artillery, “Mrs. Lock stuck
so many white feathers in her hair that it resembled a cauliflower,
while Mrs. Painter sported a white turban of such ample dimensions that
the Grand Sultan himself might have envied her.” Bonfires blazed, flags
flew from every roof, and the islanders were dressed in their best.

On January 9 the English merchant ship _Nerinae_ hove to off Tristan
da Cunha to fill her water-casks. She was bound from Buenos Aires to
Table Bay with a hold filled with live mules. Uncomfortable shipmates
these, but the people of the _Blenden Hall_ were not in a captious
mood. They were taken on board, and sailed away from Governor Glass
after spending three months with him, and it is to be fancied that he
felt no profound regrets.

A bit of romance touched the parting scenes. The night before the
_Nerinae_ sailed from Tristan, the pretty maid servant of Mrs. Lock
slipped ashore in a boat, with what few belongings she had, and joined
her sailor sweetheart, Stephen White, who had decided to remain behind
on the island. This Peggy was a Portuguese half-caste from Madras who
is referred to in the diary as a “female attendant.” Seaman White
is called a worthless fellow, but this may be taken for what it is
worth. The important fact is that he had found a sweetheart during
the weary exile on Inaccessible Island and that they were resolved to
stay together and let the rest of the world go hang. Governor Glass
was quite competent to unite them in the bonds of a marriage that was
proper in the sight of God.

There is one final glimpse of Mrs. Lock and Mrs. Painter shortly before
the good ship _Nerinae_, with her freightage of mules and castaways,
anchored in Table Bay.

The two ladies having for a considerable time been very
quiet, Captain Greig thought he would make another trial at
reconciliation, and begged Mrs. Lock to shake hands with Mrs.
Painter which the latter was willing to do, but the commodore’s
wife declared, “Me do anything Captain like, but me will bring
action for defamation against little Painter and his damn wife,
please God me ever get back to Bombay.”

Mrs. Lock used to say that she fully expected to find her dear
commodore dead with grief. Mrs. Painter repeatedly retorted that it
was far more likely she would find him with another wife, but she
might make up her mind it would not be a black one.

Thus concludes the story of the _Blenden Hall_, East Indiaman, but
it is so interwoven with the fortunes of Tristan da Cunha and its
colonists that further tidings of them may prove interesting. In 1824,
four years after the wreck of the East Indiaman, an author and artist
of New Zealand, Augustus Earle, was accidentally marooned at Tristan,
and stayed six months as the guest of Governor Glass before another
ship touched there. He had sailed from Rio for Cape Town in a sloop,
the _Duke of Gloucester_, which passed so close to the island in calm
weather that the thrifty skipper concluded to land and buy a few tons
of potatoes for the Cape market.

The artistic passenger went ashore to stroll about with dog and gun
while the sailors were loading potatoes into the boat. A sudden storm
swept the sea, and the boat was caught offshore, but managed to reach
the sloop, which was driven far from the island and gave up trying to
beat back to it. The skipper was a practical man and it was foolish to
delay the voyage for such a useless creature as an author and artist.
Mr. Augustus Earle was compelled to make the best of the awkward
situation, and he seems to have enjoyed his protracted visit of half a
year.

The village then consisted of five or six thatched cottages “which had
an air of comfort, cleanliness, and plenty truly English.” The young
sailor Stephen White, whom the _Blenden Hall_ had left behind with his
precious Peggy, was still happy in his bargain, and their babies were
playing with the lusty little flock of the Glass family. The island was
no longer a hermit’s retreat. The marooned artist noted that “children
there were in abundance, and just one year older than another.” Small
wonder that he saw little of the two women, who were fully occupied
with their domestic duties.

The worthy Governor William Glass had a curious yarn to tell of that
first ruler of the island, Jonathan Lambert of Salem, who had published
his grandiose proclamations and whose ambitious dreams were so soon
eclipsed. The accepted account is that he was drowned while out in his
boat, but the British garrison had found on the island a man who said
he had been there with Lambert and that he suspected another companion
of the first king of Tristan da Cunha of having made away with him in
order to secure his hoard of gold. Afraid of discovery, the regicide
had fled the island, leaving the treasure behind him.

The ingenious inventor of this narrative had professed to know where
the treasure was buried,

and that he would some day reveal it to the man of the garrison
who pleased him most, thus insuring good treatment from the men,
each hoping to be favored. But one day after drinking immoderately
of liquor he was taken suddenly ill and expired before he could
explain to his comrades where his treasure was concealed.

At any rate, the story sufficed to supply the imaginative vagabond with
free rum and tobacco, which, no doubt, was the end in view.

Augustus Earle hunted the wild goats, which had multiplied on the
mountain-slopes, and he has left us this pleasing picture of the simple
and righteous existence led by these dwellers on remote Tristan da
Cunha:

Governor Glass informed me that the last time they had ascended
the mountain after goats, one of the party got too close to the
precipice and fell down several hundred feet. They found the corpse
next day in a miserably mangled state. They interred it in the
garden near their settlement and placed at the head of the grave
a board with his name and age, together with an account of the
accident which caused his death, and the remark that it happened
on a _Sunday_, a dreadful warning to Sabbath-breakers. The people
all say they will nevermore ascend the mountain on that sacred day.
Indeed, from all I have seen of them, they pay every respect to the
duties of religion that lies in their power.

My clothes beginning to wear out, my kind host, who was an
excellent tailor, made me a pair of trousers consisting of sail
cloth and the rear of dried goat’s skin, the hair outside, which
they all assured me would be very convenient in sliding down the
mountains. I laughed heartily when I first sported this Robinson
Crusoe habiliment. “Never mind how you look, sir,” said my kind
host, “His Majesty himself, God bless him, if he had been left here
as you were, could look no better.”

Governor William Glass ruled over the island for thirty-five years,
until his death in 1853. By that time the population had increased to a
hundred souls, and a flourishing trade was carried on in provisioning
the fleet of American whalers out of New Bedford and Nantucket which
cruised in those waters. A few years later, twenty-five of the younger
men and women emigrated to the United States, stirred by a natural
ambition to see more of the world. At the death of Governor Glass, an
old man-of-war’s-man, William Cotton, who had been for three years one
of Napoleon’s guards at St. Helena, became the head of the community.

To-day the settlement consists of a hundred people or so, most of
them of the old British strain, and many of them descended from the
families of Corporal William Glass of the Royal Artillery and the young
seaman Stephen White and his devoted Peggy who were wrecked in the
_Blenden Hall_, East Indiaman, a century ago. They manage their own
affairs without any written laws, and are described by recent visitors
as religious, hospitable to strangers, industrious, healthy, and
long-lived.

The British Government has kept a paternal eye on them, and from time
to time a minister of the Church of England has served in the stone
chapel and the trim little school-house. Their worldly wealth is in
cattle, sheep, apple and peach orchards, and they are unvexed by
politics, the League of Nations, or the social unrest. Enviable people
of Tristan da Cunha! And peace to the memories of old William Glass
and Jonathan Lambert, and the faithful sweethearts of the stately old
_Blenden Hall_!

CHAPTER V

THE ADVENTURES OF DAVID WOODARD, CHIEF MATE

Long before the art of Joseph Conrad created _Lord Jim_ to follow the
star of his romantic destiny to the somber, misty coast of Patusan, an
American sailor lived and dared amazingly among the sullen people of
those same mysterious islands of the Far East. He was of the race of
mariners whose ships were first to display the Stars and Stripes in
those far-distant waters and to challenge the powerful monopolies of
the British and Dutch East India companies. Only seven years earlier,
in fact, the American ship _Empress of China_ had ventured on the
pioneering voyage to Canton. The seas still swarmed with pirates and
every merchantman carried a heavy battery of guns and a crew which knew
to use them. Amid such conditions were trained the sailors who were to
man the _Constitution_ and the other matchless frigates of 1812.

The American ship _Enterprise_ sailed from Batavia for Manila on the
twentieth of January, 1793, and laid a course to pass through the
Straits of Macassar. Head winds and currents kept her beating to and
fro in this torrid passage for six weeks on end, and the grumbling crew
began to wonder if they had signed in another _Flying Dutchman_. Food
was running short, for this protracted voyage had not been expected,
and while the _Enterprise_ drifted becalmed on the greasy tide, another
ship was sighted about five miles distant.

Captain Hubbard ordered the chief mate, David Woodard, to take a boat
and five seamen and row off to this other vessel and try to buy some
stores. The men were William Gideon, John Cole, Archibald Miller,
Robert Gilbert, and George Williams. Expecting to be gone only a few
hours, they took no food or water, and all they carried with them was
an ax, a boat-hook, two pocket-knives, a disabled musket, and forty
dollars.

It was sunset when they pulled alongside the other ship, which was
China bound and had no provisions to spare. A strong squall and heavy
rains prevented them from returning to the _Enterprise_ that night, and
they stayed where they were until next morning. Then the wind shifted
and blew fresh from the southward to sweep the _Enterprise_ on her
course, and she had already vanished hull down and under. Stout-hearted
David Woodard guessed he could find her again, confident that Captain
Hubbard would not desert him, and his men cheerfully tumbled into the
boat after him.

The skipper of the China ship, a half-caste with a crew of Lascars,
was a surly customer who seemed anxious to be rid of his visitors.
As a friend in need he was a glaring failure. Protesting that he had
no fresh water to spare, all that their money could buy of him was
a bottle of brandy and twelve musket-cartridges. The Yankee sailors
tugged at the oars all day long, but caught never a glimpse of the
missing _Enterprise_. At nightfall they landed on an island and found
water fit to drink, but nothing to eat. A large fire was built on the
beach in the hope of attracting the attention of their ship, but there
was no responsive signal.

It was the land of Conrad’s magic fancies, where “the swampy plains
open out at the mouth of rivers, with a view of blue peaks beyond the
vast forests. In the offing a chain of islands, dark, crumbling shapes,
stand out in the everlasting sunlit haze like the remnants of a wall
broached by the sea.”

The chief mate and his five hardy seamen tightened their leather belts
another hole and shoved off again in the small open boat. For six days
they sailed the Straits, blown along by one rain squall after another,
until they were within sight of the coast of Celebes. Hunger and thirst
then compelled them to seek the land and risk death at the hands of
the savage Malays. It was their hope to proceed by sea to Macassar,
which they reckoned lay about three degrees to the southward.

They must have had a little water during these six days, but David
Woodard’s statement that the rations were a few cocoanuts is entirely
credible. Many a boat-load of castaways has died or gone mad after
privations no more severe, while on the other hand a crew of toughened
seamen, in the prime of their youth, is exceedingly hard to kill.

Toward a cove on this unknown, hostile shore of Celebes the gaunt
sailors wearily steered their boat and beached it in the languid ripple
of surf. They had no sooner crawled ashore than two proas skimmed in
from seaward, dropping anchor and making ready to send off a canoe
filled with armed Malays. Woodard shouted to his men, and they pushed
the boat out and scrambled into it before they were discovered.
Skirting a bight of the shore, they headed for the open sea and dodged
away from the proas.

Four miles beyond, after they had rounded a green point of land, a
feathery cocoanut-grove ran to the water’s-edge, and they could go no
farther. The mate left two men to guard the boat, and the three others
went with him; but they were too weak to climb the trees, and had to
hack away at the trunks with an ax. Two of them were mere lads who made
such bungling work of it that Woodard sent for a couple of the stronger
men in the boat, leaving Archibald Miller alone with it. They were
busy gathering cocoanuts to carry to sea with them when poor Miller
was heard to “scream aloud in the bitterest manner.” The mate ran to
the beach and saw his precious boat filled with Malays, who were just
shoving off in it. On the sand lay Miller, who had been hacked to death
with creeses.

David Woodard and four sailors were therefore marooned with no
resources whatever, but they talked it over and agreed to try to get
to Macassar by land. Leaving the swampy coast, they slowly toiled
toward the blue mountains and, afraid of discovery, concluded to hide
themselves in the jungle until night. Then with a star for their guide
they bore south, but progress was almost impossible, and they lost
their bearings in the dense growth. After blundering about in this
manner for several nights, they turned toward the sea again in the hope
of finding some kind of native boat. They had existed for thirteen days
since losing their ship, and it is evident that the indomitable spirit
of the mate kept the other men going.

“Woodard was himself stout in person,” explains the narrative, “and
much accustomed to fatigue and exercise, whence he felt less exhausted,
particularly from keeping up his spirits and having his mind constantly
engaged.”

At length they came to a deep bay between the mountains, and lay hidden
all day in a leafy ambush while they watched the Malay fishermen in
their canoes. Three of the sailors were taken desperately ill after
eating some yellow berries and thought they were about to die; but the
mate could not tolerate this kind of behavior, “although his comrades
now resembled corpses more than living men.” He used rough language,
damned them as worthless swabs if a stomach-ache was to make them lie
down and quit, and then went in search of water for them until he found
some in a hollow tree. But his strength and courage could haul them
along no farther and reluctantly he admitted that they would have to
surrender themselves to the natives.

[Illustration: WOODARD RAISED HIS EMPTY HANDS TO ASK FOR PEACE AND
MERCY]

They went down to the beach of the bay, wondering what their fate might
be, John Cole, who was a stripling lad of seventeen, blubbering that he
would sooner die in the woods than be killed by the Malays. The canoes
had gone away, but three brown-skinned girls were fishing in a brook,
and they fled when they saw the tattered castaways. Presently a group
of men came down a forest path, and Woodard walked forward to meet
them, raising his empty hands to ask for peace and mercy.

The Malays stood silent for a long time, and then the chief advanced to
lay down his creese and ceremoniously accept the strangers as captives.
They were given food and conducted to a little town of bamboo huts,
there to await the pleasure of the rajah in what Woodard called the
judgment hall, while all the villagers gathered about them.

Soon the rajah strode in, tall and straight and warlike, a long, naked
creese in his hand. 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.

For twenty days they were closely held as prisoners in this forest
settlement, during which time two old men arrived from another town and
displayed a lively interest in the situation. They toddled off into
the jungle, but came again with a Mahomedan priest called Tuan Hadjee,
who was a bit of a linguist in that he spoke a few words of English,
some Portuguese, and a smattering of the Moorish tongue. He was a man
of the world, having journeyed to Bombay and Bengal on his way to
Mecca, and displayed a letter from the British governor of Balambangan,
on the island of Borneo, to show that he was a good and trustworthy
person and was empowered to assist all distressed Englishmen.

This Tuan Hadjee lived up to his credentials, for he offered the rajah
a hundred dollars in golddust as ransom for the five seamen, which
price was haughtily refused, and the kindly priest went away to see
what else could be done about it. Nothing more was seen of this amiable
pilgrim, and the Americans were set to work in the forest to clear the
fields or to gather sago. After two months they were left unguarded
by day, but shut up in a house at night. Week after week dragged by
in this wearisome drudgery, but they kept alive, and their spirit was
unbroken, although the food was poor and scanty and the tropical heat
scorched the very souls out of them.

At the end of half a year of this enslavement another rajah who seems
to have been a kind of overlord of the region summoned them into his
presence at a town on the sea-coast. There Woodard almost died of
fever, but a woman befriended him and greatly helped to save his life.
The episode suggests a romance, and this viking of a sailor who drifted
in so strangely from an unknown world was a man to win the love of
women. In this respect, however, he was discreetly silent when it came
to relating the story of his wanderings in Celebes, and the interest
which he inspired is sedately described as follows:

At her first visit she looked at him some time in silence, then
went to the bazaar and bought some tobacco and bananas which she
presented to him, as also a piece of money. Seeing him scantily
clothed, she asked whether he had no more clothing and whether he
would have some tea. Then carrying one of the other sick men home
with her, she gave him tea and a pot to boil it in. She likewise
sent rice and some garments, with a pillow and two mats. This good
woman was of royal blood and married to a Malay merchant. These
were not her only gifts, for she proved a kind friend to the seamen
while they were at that place.

Another house being provided for the five men, Woodard, unable to
walk, was carried thither accompanied by a great concourse of young
females who immediately on his arrival kindled a fire and began to
boil rice. His fever still continued very severe and on the morning
of the fourth day of his residence an old woman appeared with a
handful of boughs, announcing that she was come to cure him and
that directly. In the course of a few minutes four or five more
old women were seen along with her, according to the custom of the
country in curing the sick. They spent the day in brushing him with
the boughs of the trees and used curious incantations. The ceremony
was repeated in the evening and he was directed to go and bathe in
the river. Although he put little faith in the proceedings, the
fever abated and he speedily began to recover.

From a Dutch fort seventy miles away the commandant came to see Woodard
and invited him to return with him, offering to buy him out of slavery.
The chief mate refused, because he was afraid of being compelled to
join the Dutch military service. He was shrewd enough to perceive that
this was what the commandant had in mind, and he therefore begged to be
sent to Macassar, whence he could make his way to Batavia. At this the
commandant lost interest in the castaways and made no more attempt to
help them.

Soon after this they were carried back to the village of their first
imprisonment, but Woodard had seen blue water again and he was resolved
to risk his life for liberty. Eluding his guards, he took a spear for
a weapon and followed the forest paths all night until he emerged on
a beach, where he discovered a canoe and paddled out to sea. Rough
water swamped the ticklish craft, and he had to swim half a mile to get
to land again. Back he trudged to his hut on the mountain-side and
crawled into it before dawn.

Undiscouraged, he broke away again, and made for a town called
Dungalla, where he had a notion that his friend Tuan Hadjee, the
priest, might be found. He somehow steered a course through the forests
and ravines and fetched up at the stockade which surrounded Dungalla.
As a disquieting apparition he alarmed a nervous old gentleman, who
scampered off to shriek to the village that a gigantic white devil was
sitting on a log at the edge of the clearing. The old codger turned out
to be a servant of Tuan Hadjee, who warmly welcomed the chief mate and
took him into his house as a guest.

The rajah to whom Woodard belonged got wind of his whereabouts and
wrathfully demanded that he be sent back. The prideful rajah of
Dungalla refused in language no less provocative. Woodard smuggled a
message through to his men, urging them to escape and join him. This
they succeeded in doing, and the people of Dungalla were delighted to
receive them. This episode strained the relations of the two rajahs to
the breaking-point, and war was promptly declared.

Inasmuch as they were the bone of contention, Woodard and his seamen
promptly offered to fight on the side of the rajah of Dungalla; so
they proceeded to imperil their skins in one of those tribal feuds
which eternally flicker and smolder in the Malaysian forests. Woodard
was placed in command of a tower upon the stockade wall, where he
served a brass swivel and hammered obedience into a native detachment.
His sun-blistered, leech-bitten sailors, clad only in sarongs, held
the other barricade with creeses and muskets, and were regarded as
supernatural heroes by the simple soldiery of the rajah.

A drawn battle was fought, with about two hundred men in each army, and
a good many were killed or wounded. After that the war dragged along
and seemed to be getting nowhere, and the chief mate lost all patience
with it; so he bearded the rajah and flatly told him that his men would
fight no longer unless some assurance was given that they would be
conveyed to Macassar.

The rajah was stubborn and evasive and bruskly commanded the
high-tempered Yankees to return to their posts on the firing-line.
Woodard argued no longer, but marched back to his watch-tower, sent
for his seamen, and told them to turn in their muskets. Before the
astonished rajah had decided how to deal with this mutiny, the five
mariners broke out of the town under cover of darkness and stole a
canoe, carrying with them as much food as they could hastily lay hands
on. They were delayed in a search for paddles, and a sentry gave the
alarm.

Twenty soldiers surrounded them and dragged them back to the rajah, who
locked them up, while he chewed betel-nut and meditated on the case of
these madmen who refused to be tamed. Just then the priest Tuan Hadjee
was sailing for another port, and he vainly petitioned the royal assent
to taking the American sailors along with him. The rajah’s wrathful
refusal so annoyed the impetuous chief mate that he organized another
dash for freedom. Captivity, privation, and disappointment seemed to
daunt him not at all.

This time the five mariners surprised the sentries at the gates,
deftly tied them up, and lugged them to the beach. There a large canoe
was discovered, and the fugitives piled aboard and hoisted the sail
of cocoanut matting. Unmolested, they moved out of the starlit bay
and flitted along the coast until sunrise. Then they hauled in to
hide at an island until night. While making sail again, one of the
men carelessly stepped upon the gunwale of the cranky craft, and it
instantly capsized almost a mile from shore.

They climbed upon the bottom, managed to save the paddles, and
navigated the canoe back to the island by swimming with it. There they
rekindled their fire, dried and warmed themselves, and were ready to
try it again. They had lost the sail and mast, but they paddled all
night and began to hope that they had gone clear of their troublesome
rajah.

In the morning, however, a proa swooped down like a hawk, and again the
unlucky seamen were taken captive. They told the Malay captain that
they were bound to the port for which Tuan Hadjee had sailed, as he was
a friend and protector of theirs, and requested that they be landed
there. Apparently the amiable priest had some power and influence even
among the cutthroats who manned these proas, for the captain agreed to
do as he was asked, and he proved to be as good as his word.

In this manner the chief mate and his men were carried to the port,
which they called Sawyeh. Tuan Hadjee was there, and he gave them a
house and was a genial host while they looked the situation over and
endeavored to unravel the strands of their tangled destiny. The priest
entertained them with tales of his own career, which had been lurid in
spots. He was now sixty years of age, with a girl wife of sixteen, and
a man of great piety and much respected, but in his younger days he had
been a famous pirate of the island of Mindanao.

Among his exploits was the capture of a Dutch settlement in the Strait
of Malacca, when he had commanded a proa of ten guns and two hundred
men. He had been in a fair way of becoming one of the most successful
pirates of those seas, but while chasing a merchant vessel his proa had
turned turtle in a gale of wind, and he thereby lost all his property
and riches. After this misfortune he had forsaken piracy and turned to
leading an honorable life.

He was an excellent companion to these exiled sailormen from faraway
New England and even gave them the use of an island where there was
fruit and wild game and a pleasant house to live in, but they were no
more contented. After several weeks, Tuan Hadjee announced that he had
some business to attend to on another part of the coast, but would
return in twenty days and then attempt to send the chief mate and his
men to their own people at Batavia. While he was gone, a merchant proa
came into port, and Woodard found that she was bound to Sulu, in the
Philippine Islands, whence he felt certain he could get passage in some
ship trading with Manila. In high hopes he arranged matters with the
master of the proa, and the five castaways sailed away from Celebes.

Alas! this Malay skipper was an honest man, according to his lights,
and the gossip of the town had led him to draw his own conclusions.
His inference was that these white men belonged to Tuan Hadjee and
were bent on running away during his absence. No hint was dropped to
Woodard and his companions, and they happily beguiled themselves with
visions of deliverance. But the captain of the proa had taken pains to
inform himself of the destination of the absent Tuan Hadjee; wherefore
he shifted his helm and bore away, to turn his passengers over to
their proper owner. To their amazed disgust, they sailed into a little
jungle-fringed port called Tomboa, and there, sure enough, was the no
less surprised Tuan Hadjee.

The honest Malay skipper explained the situation and sailed away again,
while Woodard and his disconsolate shipmates stood on the beach and
cursed their luck and shook their fists at the departing proa.

Their reunion with Tuan Hadjee was a painful episode. As a reformed
pirate he could swear harder and louder and longer than a Yankee
seaman. He took the Malay skipper’s view of it, that these guests
of his had broken faith with him by absconding while his back was
turned. The chief mate had learned to adorn his language with an
extra embroidery of Malaysian profanity, and the interview was not
only eloquent, but turbulent. Then Tuan Hadjee, having exhausted his
breath, turned sulky, and the villagers took the cue. They ignored the
white visitors as though they were under a ban of excommunication until
Woodard delivered a speech in the crowded market-place.

Speaking to them in their own tongue, he eloquently declaimed that
the unfortunate strangers had been guilty of no other crime than that
of yearning to behold once more the faces of their own dear wives and
children. The feelings of Tuan Hadjee were profoundly stirred by the
oration. Amid the applause of the fickle populace he clasped the chief
mate to his breast, and vowed that while a mouthful of rice remained to
him, his friends should share it with him.

Nothing was said, however, about setting the captives free, and these
energetic sailors began to plan another voyage on their own account.
Tuan Hadjee shrewdly suspected something of the sort, and all the
canoes were carried away from the beach and guarded when the sun went
down. A pirate proa came winging it into the harbor of Tomboa to fill
the water-casks and give the crew shore liberty. Woodard noticed that
the men came ashore in a canoe unusually large and seaworthy, and
resolved to steal it by hook or crook. He asked the sociable pirates
to let him use the canoe to go fishing in and offered to share the
catch with them. To this they consented, providing he went out in the
daytime and stayed well inside the bay.

After several fishing trips, Woodard sauntered down to the beach in the
dusk as though to overhaul the canoe for an early start next morning.
The villagers had ceased to watch his movements. The proa rode at
anchor only a few yards away, where the channel ran close to a steep
bank. The pirates were lounging on deck and in the cabin, and none of
them happened to glance in the direction of the canoe. Woodard waited
a little, and slid the canoe into the quiet water. As silent as a
drifting leaf it moved away with the tide, while he lay in the bottom
with a fishing-line over the side as a pretext if he should be hailed
from the proa.

Unobserved, he landed at another beach, where his comrades awaited him.
They embarked, and stole out of the bay with food and water to last
them several days. At last they were bound for Macassar and again ready
to defy the devil and the deep sea. For three days they held on their
way and began to think the luck had turned when a small proa tacked out
from the land and overtook the canoe. Woodard recognized the crew as
acquaintances of his from Tomboa, and frankly told them where he was
going. They commanded him to fetch his men aboard the proa, and they
would be given up to the rajah of Tomboa; but the odds were so nearly
even, five Americans against seven natives, that Woodard laughed at
them. Hoisting sail, he drove his canoe to windward of the proa, and
handled it so well that he fairly ran away from pursuit.

The wind was too strong for the fragile canoe, and they had to seek
refuge in the mouth of a river, where they built a fire to cook some
rice. Here they encountered two natives who had come ashore from a
trading proa, one of them a captain who had seen the fugitives while at
Tomboa. He insisted that they surrender and return with him. Tired of
so much interference, the chief mate knocked him down, and held a knife
at his throat until the Malay mariner changed his opinion.

The proa chased them, however, when the canoe resumed its voyage;
but night came on, and a thunder squall enabled them to slip away
undiscovered. Eight days after leaving Tomboa they began to pass many
towns and a great deal of shipping on the coast of Celebes, but they
doggedly kept on their course to Macassar. They fought off a war-canoe,
which attacked them with arrows and spears, but had no serious
misadventures until a large boat came swiftly paddling out of an inlet
and fairly overwhelmed them by force of numbers.

Captives again, the five long-suffering seafarers were carried into
Pamboon, where the rajah found them unsatisfactory to interview.
David Woodard, chief mate, was in no mood to be thwarted, and it is
related of him that “he was examined in the presence of the rajah and
all the head men of the place. He made the same answers as before,
saying that he must not be stopped and must go on immediately, thus
being more desperate and confident from the dangers and escapes he had
experienced. The rajah asked him if he could use a musket well, which
he denied, having formerly found the inconvenience of acknowledging
it. The rajah then showed him a hundred brass guns, but he declined
taking charge of them. His wife, a young girl, sat down by the mate
and, calling her sister and about twenty other girls, desired them to
sit down, and asked Woodard to select a wife from among them. This he
refused and, rising up, bade her good night and went out of the house,
where they soon brought him some supper.”

In the morning this redoubtable Yankee mate who, like Ulysses, was deaf
to the songs of the sirens and was also as crafty as he was brave,
waited on the rajah of Pamboon and very courteously addressed him in
the Malay tongue, requesting prompt passage to Macassar on the ground
that the Dutch governor had urgently summoned him, and if he were
detained at Pamboon, it would be most unpleasant for the rajah, whose
proas would be seized and his ports blockaded, no doubt, by way of
punishment.

This gave the haughty rajah something to think about. The fearless
demeanor and impressive stature of this keen-eyed mariner made his
words convincing. After due reflection, the rajah sent for the captain
of a proa, and told him to take these troublesome white men to Macassar
with all possible haste. Woodard was worn out, his bare back terribly
burned and festered, his strength almost ebbed, and he had to be
hoisted aboard the proa upon a litter; but he was still the resolute,
unconquerable seaman and leader. The accommodations were so wretched
that after three days of suffering he ordered the proa to set him
ashore and to send word to the nearest rajah.

This was done, and the dusky potentate who received the message did all
in his power to make the party comfortable, fitting out a proa, which
enabled them to make the final run of the voyage with no more hardship.
Tales of Woodard had passed by word of mouth along the coasts of
Celebes until he was almost a legendary character. It was on June 15,
1795, that these five wanderers reached their goal of Macassar after
two years and five months of captivity among the Malays. They were not
only alive, every man of them, but not one was permanently broken in
health.

The Dutch governor of the island and the officers of the garrison
of the Dutch East India Company treated them with the most generous
hospitality, providing clothes and money and refusing to listen to
promises of recompense. They soon sailed for Batavia, where the four
sailors, William Gideon, John Cole, Robert Gilbert, and George Williams
signed articles in an American ship bound to Boston, and resumed
the hard and hazardous toil of the sea to earn their bread. Their
extraordinary experience was all in the day’s work, and it is unlikely
that they thought very much about it.

Woodard took a berth as chief mate in another American ship that was
sailing for Calcutta and while in that port was offered command of a
country ship engaged in the coastwise trade. During one of his voyages
he was strolling ashore when he came face to face with Captain Hubbard
of the _Enterprise_, which had vanished in the Straits of Macassar and
left its unlucky boat adrift. The delighted captain explained that he
had waited and cruised about for three days in a search for the missing
boat and had given it up for lost.

He warmly urged Woodard to join him in his fine new ship, the
_America_, and go to Mauritius. The former chief mate gladly accepted
the invitation, for he was homesick for his own flag and people. At
Mauritius Captain Hubbard gave up the command because of ill health
and turned it over to David Woodard. Thus the true story all turned
out precisely as should be, and it was Captain Woodard who trod the
quarterdeck of his taut ship _America_ as she lifted her lofty spars in
the lovely harbor of Mauritius.

Coincidence is often stranger in fact than in fiction. Before he left
Mauritius, Captain Woodard ran across three of his old sailors of the
open boat and the two years of captivity among the Malays. They had
been wrecked on another China voyage, and were in distress for lack of
clothes and money. Their old chief mate, now a prosperous shipmaster,
with a share in the profits of the voyage, outfitted them handsomely
and left them with dollars in their pockets.

In later years Captain David Woodard traded to Batavia, and met more
than one Malay who had seen him or had listened to fabulous tales of
his prowess during his long durance in the jungles and mountains of
Celebes. In 1804 this splendid adventurer of the old merchant marine
was able to retire from the sea with an independent income. Near
Boston he bought a farm and lived on it, and this was the proper way to
cast anchor, for such is the ambition of all worthy mariners when they
cease to furrow the blue sea.

CHAPTER VI

CAPTAIN PADDOCK ON THE COAST OF BARBARY

The veterans of the Revolution of ’76, who had won a war for freedom,
were still young men when American sailors continued to be bought and
sold as slaves for a few dollars a head on the farther side of the
Atlantic. It was a trade which had flourished during the colonial
period, and was unmolested even after the Stars and Stripes proclaimed
the sovereign pride and independence of this Union of States. Indeed,
while hundreds of American mariners were held in this inhuman bondage,
their Government actually sent to the Dey of Algiers a million dollars
in money and other gifts, including a fine new frigate, as humble
tribute to this bloody heathen pirate in the hope of softening his
heart.

It was the bitterest touch of humiliation that this frigate, the
_Crescent_, sailed from the New England harbor of Portsmouth, whose
free tides had borne a few years earlier the brave keels of John Paul
Jones’s _Ranger_ and _America_.

The Christian nations of Europe deliberately granted immunity to these
nests of sea-robbers in Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli in order
that they might prey upon the ships and sailors of weaker countries and
destroy their commerce. This ignoble spirit was reflected in a speech
of Lord Sheffield in Parliament in 1784.

“It is not now probable that the American States will have a very
free trade in the Mediterranean. It will not be to the interest of
any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the Barbary
States. If they know their interests, they will not encourage
the Americans to be ocean carriers. That the Barbary States are
advantageous to maritime powers is certain.”

It was not until 1803 that the United States, a feeble nation with a
little navy, resolved that these shameful indignities could no longer
be endured. While Europe cynically looked on and forbore to lend a
hand, Commodore Preble steered the _Constitution_ and the other ships
of his squadron into the harbor of Tripoli, smashed its defenses, and
compelled an honorable treaty of peace. Of all the wars in which the
American Navy had won high distinction, there is none whose episodes
are more brilliant than those of the bold adventure on the coast of
Barbary.

The spirit of it was typical of Preble, the fighting Yankee commodore,
who fell in with a strange ship one black night in the Straits of
Gibraltar. From the quarterdeck of the _Constitution_ he trumpeted a
hail, but the response was evasive, and both ships promptly manœuvered
for the weather gage.

“I hail you for the last time. If you don’t answer, I’ll fire into
you,” roared Preble. “What ship is that?”

“His Britannic Majesty’s eighty-four gun ship-of-the-line _Donegal_,”
came back the reply. “Send a boat on board.”

Without an instant’s hesitation the commodore thundered from his Yankee
frigate:

“This is the United States forty-four-gun ship _Constitution_, Captain
Edward Preble, and I’ll be damned if I send a boat aboard any ship.
Blow your matches, boys!”

Until the hordes of Moorish and Arab cutthroats and slavers were taught
by force to respect the flag flown by American merchantmen, 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.

The old records note many such incidents, as that in 1700:

Benjamin Alford and William Bowditch related that their friend
Robert Carver was taken nine years before a captive into Sallee,
that contributions had been made for his redemption, that the
money was in the hands of a person here, and that if they had the
disposal of it they could release Carver.

The expansion of American trade in far-distant waters which swiftly
followed the Revolution increased the number of disasters of this kind,
and among the old narratives of the sea that were written about 1800
no theme is more frequent, and few so tragic, as the sufferings of the
survivors of some gallant American ship which laid her bones among the
breakers of the African coast. These personal experiences, simply and
movingly written by some intelligent master or mate and printed as thin
books or pamphlets, were among the “best sellers” of their day when the
world of fact was as wildly romantic as the art of fiction was able to
weave for later generations.

Among these briny epics of the long ago is the story of Captain
Judah Paddock and his crew of the ship _Oswego_. She sailed from
Cork in March, 1800, for the Cape Verd Islands, to take on a cargo
of salt and hides and then to complete the homeward voyage to New
York. The _Oswego_ was a fast and able vessel of 260 tons, absurdly
small to modern eyes, and carried thirteen sailors, including boys.
After passing Cape Finisterre, Captain Paddock began to distrust his
reckoning because of much thick weather, but felt no serious concern
until the ship was fairly in the surf, which pounded and hammered her
hull with one tremendous blow after another.

Daylight disclosed what the old sea-songs called “the high coast of
Barbary” no more than a few hundred yards distant. The _Oswego_ was
beating out her life among the rocks, and it was time to leave her.
The boats were smashed in trying to land, and the only refuge was this
cruel and ominous shore, the barren wastes of sand and mountain, the
glaring sun, the evil nomads.

With a few bottles of water and such food as they could pack on
their backs, these pilgrims set out to trudge along the coast in the
direction of Mogador, where they hoped to find the protection of an
English consul. It was not an auspicious omen when they discovered a
group of roofless huts rudely built of stone, a heap of human bones,
and the broken timbers of a large frigate washed up by the tide. These
relics were enough to indicate the fate of a large company of seamen
who had been cast away in this savage region.

There were men of all sorts among these hapless refugees of the
_Oswego_, and most of them endured their hard lot with the patient
courage of the deep-water mariner. The cook, however, was an
exasperating rascal of an Irishman called Pat who had smuggled himself
aboard at Cork as a ragged stowaway, and he lost no time in starting
trouble on the coast of Barbary. In his pack was a bottle of gin, which
had passed the skipper’s inspection as water, and while on sentry duty
at night to watch for prowling Arabs, Pat got uproariously drunk and
fought a Danish foremast hand who was tippling with him. In the ruction
they smashed several precious bottles of water, and were too tipsy next
morning to resume the march.

The other sailors held an informal trial. This was their own affair,
and Captain Paddock’s protests were unheeded. Pat was so drunk that
he could not appear in his own defense, and the sentence was that his
share of the bread and water should be taken from him and he be left
behind to die. He was accordingly abandoned, blissfully snoring on
the sand, the empty gin bottle in his fist; but after a mile or so of
painful progress two of the men relented and listened to the captain’s
appeal. Back they went, and dragged Pat along, damning him bitterly and
swearing to kill him on the spot if he misbehaved again.

After three days the torments of thirst were severe, and the heat
blistered their souls. In the wreck of the _Oswego_ there was water in
barrels, plenty of it, and this was all that the fevered minds of most
of the sufferers could think of. Captain Paddock urged them to keep on
with him to the eastward a few days longer toward Mogador, but they
were ready to turn and struggle back to the ship, fifty miles, just
to get enough water to drink. It mattered not to them that they were
throwing away the hope of survival.

The captain was made of sterner stuff, and so they amiably agreed to
part company. A black sailor, Jack, stepped forward and said with
simple fidelity:

“Master, if you go on, I go, too.”

The other negro of the crew grinned at his comrade and exclaimed:

“If you go, Jack, I reckon I’s obliged to stand by.”

The scapegrace Pat, regarding the captain as his friend and protector,
also elected to stay with him.

So Captain Judah Paddock was left to toil onward with Black Sam and
Black Jack and the impossible Irish cook as his companions in misery
while the mate and the rest of the crew turned westward to find the
wreck of their ship. The parting scene has a certain nobility and
pathos, as the captain’s narrative describes it.

The generosity of my fellow sufferers ought not to pass by
unnoticed. To a man they agreed that we should have a larger
share of the water remaining than those returning to the ship.
Furthermore, they invited us to join them in taking a drink from
their own stock and at the conclusion, sailor-like, they proposed a
parting glass, also from their own bottles. All things arranged and
our packs made up, we took of each other an affectionate leave and
thus we separated. The expression of every man on this truly trying
occasion can never be erased from my memory as long as my senses
remain. Some of us could hardly speak the word _farewell_. We shook
hands with each other and silently moved in opposite directions.

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.

The Arabs traveled in haste to reach the wreck of the _Oswego_ as a
rare prize to be gutted. When they arrived on the scene, another desert
clan, two hundred and fifty strong, had already swooped down and was in
possession. There was much yelling and fighting and bloodshed before
a truce was declared and the spoils were divided. Meanwhile Captain
Paddock found opportunity to talk with the mate of the _Oswego_ and the
band of sailors who had returned to the wreck just in time to be made
miserable captives. Presently Captain Paddock was dragged away from
them. This was, indeed, a last farewell, for of this larger party of
American castaways only one was ever heard of again.

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. The first words spoken to us by this frightful looking
object were, “_Who are you? My friends! My friends!_”

I would have arisen to greet him but was too feeble. He sat down
at my side, the tears streaming from his eyes, while he gave an
account of himself. His name was George and he had been the steward
of a ship called the _Martin Hall_ of London, cast away upon that
coast more than a year before. Part of the crew had been marched
in a southeasterly direction to a place they called Elic, another
part had been carried to Swearah and there ransomed, and four of
them yet remained among the wandering Arabs who had been very cruel
to them. He had no doubt that some of the men had been murdered
because it was rumored that their owners could not find a ready
sale for them, or the prices offered were too small.

A few days after this, the chief of the tribe, Ahamed, came back from
a journey with two other lads of this same English crew. One was Jack,
a cabin boy of thirteen, and the other was named Lawrence, a year or
two older. Curiously enough, the English-born urchin, Jack, seemed
contented among these wild Bedouins, and was rapidly forgetting his
own people and the memories of childhood. These three youngsters from
the _Martin Hall_ had learned to speak Arabic quite readily, and they
informed Captain Paddock that all the white slaves were to be sold at
once and that bargaining had already begun.

The captain of the _Oswego_ and his two black seamen were held at very
high prices, and apparently there was no immediate market for them.
In this year of 1800 thrifty New England skippers and merchants were
piling up money in the African slave-trade, and there was logic in the
argument of Ahamed, the Bedouin chief:

“I do not wish to sell these two black men at any price. They are
used to our climate and can travel the desert without suffering.
They are men that you Christian dogs stole from the Guinea coast,
and you were going there to get more of them. You are worse than
the Arabs who enslave you only when it is God’s will to send you on
our coast.”

Captain Paddock confessed that never did he feel a reproach more
sensibly; that a great many wearing the Christian name did force away
from their homes and carry into perpetual slavery the poor African
negroes, and thereby did make themselves worse than the Arabs. The
English lads drove this truth home by secretly admitting to him
that their ship, the _Martin Hall_, had been engaged in the Guinea
slave-trade when wrecked on the coast of Barbary.

After much dickering with Ahamed, the captain agreed to purchase
freedom at the rate of forty dollars per head, in addition to two
looking-glasses, two combs, two pairs of scissors, a large bunch
of beads, and a knife, as soon as he and his companions should be
safely delivered at a friendly port. This price was not to include
any official ransom which the crafty Arabs might squeeze out of the
representatives of the British or American governments.

Several days of noisy haggling were necessary before Captain Paddock,
Irish Pat, and the three English boys were transferred to a new owner,
but the chief retained Black Sam and Black Jack, and his caravan moved
off to the mountains with them. “The looks of these poor fellows were
so dejected, it was painful to behold them,” wrote the skipper, and in
this forlorn manner vanished forever these two seamen of the _Oswego’s_
forecastle who had served with a cheerful fidelity and whose hearts
were as white as their skins were black.

The Arabs drifted into a region more fertile, where there was grain to
reap with sickles and grazing for the large flocks. The mariners were
kept at unremitting toil on the scantiest rations, and they became mere
skeletons; but their health bore up astonishingly well, and not one of
them died by the wayside. The irrepressible Pat came nearest to death
when he sang Irish songs and danced jigs for the Arab women, and so
delighted them that they fed him on porridge, or “stirabout,” as he
called it, until he swelled like a balloon.

That astute chieftain, Ahamed, reappeared on some important errand
of tribal conference, and again held discourse with Captain Paddock
concerning the ethics of the slave-trade. In his stately fashion he
declaimed:

“You say that if I were in your country, your people would treat
me better than I treat you. There is no truth in you; nothing but
lies. If I were there, I should be doomed to a life-time of slavery
and be put to the hardest labor in tilling your fields. You are
too lazy yourselves to work in your fields, and therefore you send
your ships to the negro coast, and in exchange for the worthless
trinkets with which you cheat those poor blacks, you take away
ship-loads of them to your country from which never one returns. We
pray earnestly to Almighty God to send Christians ashore here in
order that we may gain a little profit of the same kind, and God
hears our prayers and often sends us some good ships.”

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 warship, 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 small tribe went down to
despoil them of all their belongings, as was righteous and proper,
but the armed men-of-war’s-men fired upon the Arab visitors, who were
enraged at the resistance of these Christian dogs and fell upon them
furiously. Many were killed on both sides, and the Arabs, finding the
enemy so numerous and well disciplined, sent for help, and another
tribe went down to the sea.

It was a great fight, for the Christian sailors shot very straight and
often, and the Arabs were not able to close in with their long knives;
so a third tribe was summoned, and the command was turned over to
Ahamed. He said to Captain Paddock:

[Illustration: WRECK OF THE “GROSVENOR” ON THE COAST OF CAFFRARIA]

“At daylight I made signs to the infidel dogs to lay down their
arms upon which their camp seemed all in confusion. At the moment
we were preparing to attack them, they formed themselves in a
close body and began to march off eastward. We formed ourselves in
three divisions, according to the tribes, and the chief of each
tribe led his own men. We attacked them in front and in rear, and
after fighting a long time we killed half those dogs, and then the
remnant left alive laid down their arms. We now all dropped our
guns, and fell upon them with our knives, and every one of them was
killed, and the whole number we found to be five hundred.”

After several months of heartbreaking toil and hopes deferred, Ahamed
concluded to take the business in hand and to see what could be done
about getting rid of the captain and Pat and the three English boys at
a satisfactory profit. The harvests had been gathered, and the demand
for labor was not urgent. Ahamed had been greatly pestered by a hag of
a sister who was anxious to get her hands on a looking-glass, comb, and
scissors which had been mentioned as part of the bargain.

Accordingly they set out for the coast with Ahamed in charge of a
small escort, all mounted on good Arab horses, the captives tortured
by uncertainty, for “avarice was the ruling passion of our owners,”
says Captain Paddock, “and if they could have obtained as much money by
putting us to death as by selling us, I verily believe they would not
have hesitated to kill us on the spot, for of humane feelings toward
Christians they were completely devoid.”

Near the coast they met two horsemen, who halted to discuss conditions
in the slave-marts, much as modern salesmen meet in the lobby of a
hotel. One of these pilgrims advised Ahamed to stay away from Swearah,
telling him:

“It is not best to carry them there. At Elic the Jews will give
more for them than the consul at Swearah will pay as ransom.
Besides, the plague has been killing so many people that you ought
to keep these Christian slaves until the next harvest, when there
will be a great scarcity of labor.”

This advice seemed plausible until Ahamed encountered two acquaintances
afoot, one of them a very bald old man, who held an opinion quite the
contrary, explaining:

“In Elic the plague still rages, and if you carry your Christian slaves
there, they may all die before you get rid of them. And just now they
would not fetch enough to reward you for the trouble of taking them
there.”

Evidently perplexed, Ahamed changed the course of his journey, to the
dismay of Captain Paddock, who feared that he was to be conveyed into
the interior of Barbary, beyond all chance of salvation. In a walled
town Ahamed met his own brother, who was also a tribal chief, and for
once the wretched captives were given enough to eat.

“Dear brother of mine,” was Ahamed’s greeting. “I am bound off to
find a market for these vile Christians, who have been complaining
incessantly of hunger. And I promised that they should have an
abundance of victuals upon their arrival here.”

The brother gravely assented, and his hospitality was so sincere that
when one of his wives failed to cook sufficient stew for the evening
meal he felled her with a club and proceeded to beat her to death by
way of reproof.

“I will see if my orders cannot be obeyed,” he remarked to Ahamed, who
viewed it as no affair of his.

An exchange of gossip persuaded Ahamed to seek the little Moorish
seaport of Saint Cruz, or Agadir, and try to dispose of them to the
best advantage. Four months after the wreck of the _Oswego_, Captain
Judah Paddock beheld a harbor and ships riding at anchor. The governor
of Agadir, a portly, courteous Moor, commanded Ahamed to take his
captives to Mogador without delay and deliver them up to the British
consul. To Captain Paddock he declared:

“These Arabs are a set of thieves, robbers, and murderers, and from
time immemorial they have been at war with the Moors and with all
others within their reach. If there is any more trouble, I will keep
you here a few days, when I shall be going myself to Mogador.”

The warlike Ahamed was somewhat abashed by this reception, but he made
great haste to obey the governor’s decree. Mounted on camels, the party
crossed the mountain trails, and then halted to consider breaking
back into the desert with the captives and seeking a more auspicious
market for them. Ahamed regretted that he had not sold them before he
foolishly strayed into the clutches of the accursed Moorish governor
of Agadir. More than likely there would be no ransom forthcoming at
Mogador.

In the nick of time another Moorish gentleman strolled into the little
walled mountain town where they tarried for the night, and demanded to
know what was going on. To him Ahamed sourly vouchsafed:

“These be Christians whom God in His goodness cast upon our coast. We
bought them on the edge of the great desert from a tribe which had
taken them from the wreck. We had intended to carry them on to Mogador,
but to-day we have heard that the consul has no money to buy Christians
with.”

The Moor suggested that Captain Paddock dictate a letter to the British
consul at Mogador, naming a ransom price of four hundred dollars each,
which message could be sent on ahead of Ahamed, who might then await a
reply before venturing into the city. The messenger galloped away on a
spirited steed, but, alas! he soon came galloping back, having met a
friend on the road who read the letter and swore that it would not do
at all.

Captain Paddock was in the depths of despair when the friendly Moor
came to the rescue with another plan. The American captain should be
his own messenger into Mogador, with Ahamed and an escort to guard
against escape, while the other sailors were held in the mountains as
hostages.

This idea was favorably received, and after a wearisome journey Captain
Judah Paddock rode into Mogador to find the British consul. When he
entered the flat-roofed stone building above which flew the red cross
of St. George, six or eight hearty-looking English sailors rushed
forward to welcome him as a shipwrecked seamen. They were survivors
of the _Martin Hall_, “and when I told them that three of their crew
were with my party,” relates Captain Paddock, “their joy was loud and
boisterous. One lusty son of Neptune ran to the consul’s door, shouting:

“‘Mr. Gwyn, Mr. Gwyn, an English captain is here from the Arab coast,
and the Arabs with him!’”

The consul, an elderly man, hastened out in his shirt and breeches, for
the hour was early in the morning, and to him Captain Paddock explained
that he was really an American shipmaster whose only chance of rescue
had been in calling himself an Englishman. Mr. Gwyn invited him to sit
down to breakfast, and tactfully explained that there was supposed
to be an American consular agent in Mogador, but the incumbent just
then was a Genoese who spoke no English, and had been bundled aboard
an outward-bound ship by command of the Emperor of Morocco, who had
conceived a dislike for him. Mr. Gwyn went on to break the news that he
had no funds with which to ransom captive sailors and that the nearest
official resource would be the American consul-general at Tangier.

At this Ahamed was for dragging his slaves back to the desert, but the
kindly Mr. Gwyn had no intention of permitting it, and he introduced
Captain Paddock to a firm of British merchants, the brothers William
and Alexander Court, who promptly offered to pay the amounts stipulated
and to trust to the American government for repayment.

It then transpired that even after paying the price to the Arab tribes
for the recovery of such shipwrecked waifs as these, it depended upon
the whim and the pleasure of the Emperor of Morocco whether they should
be allowed to go home from Barbary. He had been known to hold Christian
wanderers as prisoners until it suited him to issue a special edict or
passport of departure.

While dining at the house of a British resident in Mogador, Captain
Paddock met a Jewish merchant recently returned from the Sahara coast
who told a yarn which brought a gleam of humor into the bitter
experience of the castaways. He had got wind of a shipwreck and posted
off to the scene on the chance of a speculation. At the _Oswego_ he
found two or three hundred Arabs industriously despoiling the hulk of
the ship. She had no cargo in her when she went ashore, being merely
ballasted with Irish earth. The Arabs reasonably deduced that this
stuff must be valuable or a ship would not be laden with it, and
although they were unable to comprehend what it was, they thriftily
proceeded to salvage every possible pound of it.

They requested the Jewish merchant to examine the treasure which had
cost them much labor, as they had been compelled to dive for most
of it. Every Arab had been carefully allotted his rightful share in
order to prevent quarreling and bloodshed, and it was guarded in a
little heap inside his tent. They were greatly mortified, the merchant
recounted, when he laughed and told them the ballast was worth no more
than the sand upon which they stood.

Ahamed returned to the mountain stronghold and fetched to Mogador
the other mariners who were held as hostages awaiting the tidings of
ransom. The little British lad called Jack had no desire to leave
Barbary. He promptly ran away from Mr. Gwyn and the consulate and lived
with Moorish friends in Mogador and even paraded an adopted father.
Much distressed, Captain Paddock consulted the Moorish governor, who
replied as follows:

You shall have all the indulgence that our laws permit, which is
this: examine the boy in my presence from day to day, for three
successive days, and if you can within that time persuade him
to return to the Christian religion, you may receive him back.
Otherwise, as he has voluntarily come among us and gone through our
ceremonies, we are in duty bound to retain him.

The apostate sea urchin of the _Martin Hall_ was accordingly examined
in Arabic, and declared that he loved his adopted father, that he had
become a Mohammedan, and would never change from it. Asked the reason,
he said he liked this religion much better, because all Christians were
to be eternally damned while a Mohammedan should see God and be saved.
He repeated the long prayer of Ramadan in Arabic without stumbling
over a word, and was otherwise so proficient in the new faith that
the governor’s verdict favored his plea. There was great rejoicing
in Mogador over this conversion, and a procession of true believers
escorted young Jack through the narrow streets.

Captain Judah Paddock waited in Mogador until the word came from
the imperial palace in Fez that granted him the decree of liberty
for himself and any of his men who should be detained elsewhere in
Barbary. Soon after this an English brig stood into the harbor, but
there was no room for passengers in her, and Captain Paddock lingered
in tedious exile until a Portuguese schooner came in from Lisbon. Pat,
the Irish cook, refused to leave Mogador, but the reasons had nothing
to do with religion. He told his skipper that the mate and the men
of the _Oswego_ had sworn to kill him wherever they should cross his
hawse, afloat or ashore, and if any of them were lucky enough to escape
from Barbary, his life would not be worth a candle. He had discovered
another Irishman in Mogador who was teaching him the cooper’s trade,
and the Moorish girls were very fond of his songs and his jig-steps.

From Lisbon Captain Paddock sailed homeward bound in the good ship
_Perseverance_ of Baltimore, and set foot on his native soil in
November, almost a year after his disaster on the coast of Barbary. By
invitation he called to see the Secretary of State, John Marshall, and
told his story, besides filing the documents in the case.

Four years later than this he was walking through Water Street in New
York when he met John Hill, one of the sailors of the ill-fated crew
of the _Oswego_. He was the sole survivor of the party of the mate and
a dozen men who had been carried away from the wreck into the Barbary
desert. He had been sold separately, and often resold by one owner and
another, so that he had heard never a word of his companions, who had
been scattered among the wandering tribes of the desert.

He had chanced to meet and talk with one other Christian slave, a
sailor from an American schooner out of Norfolk who had swum ashore on
a spar when the vessel stranded, and was the only man saved. Seaman
John Hill of the _Oswego_ and this poor derelict from Norfolk had
comforted each other for a little spell, and then they were parted.
Hill had finally disguised himself as an Arab, and after a series of
wonderful escapes and adventures had managed to reach Agadir, where
he was promptly sold to a Jew, who kept him at hard labor for twelve
months before the American consul-general heard of his plight and
obtained his release.

In concluding his narrative, Captain Judah Paddock ventured this
opinion, which was, no doubt, the truth:

“All that I was able to learn while a slave in Barbary confirmed my
belief that many unfortunate mariners have been wrecked on that shore
and there perished, who were supposed by their relatives and friends to
have foundered at sea.”

Another story, well known in its day, was that of Captain James Riley
of the American brig _Commerce_ which was lost on the Barbary coast
in 1815. The torments of his crew while in the hands of their Arab
captors are really too dreadful to describe in detail. Captain Riley,
a herculean sailor weighing more than two hundred pounds, was a mere
skeleton of ninety pounds when he gained his liberty at Tangier, but he
recovered to command other ships and lived to a ripe old age. His soul
wrung with the memories of the experience, he wrote:

“Not less than six American vessels are known to have been lost
on this part of the coast since the year 1800, besides numbers of
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., which are also known to
have been wrecked there, and no doubt many other vessels that never
have been heard from,--but it is only Americans and Englishmen that
are ever heard from after the first news of the shipwreck. 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.”

Farther to the southward on this African coast was the land of the
black folk, and toward the Cape of Good Hope lay the country of the
Kafirs, against whom the Boer settlers waged a war of extermination.
All white men looked alike to these savage warriors, and it ill befell
the ship that was cast away among them. There are scenes in the
wreck of the _Grosvenor_, East Indiaman, lost on the Kafir coast in
1782, that are distinguished for haunting pathos and somber tragedy.
It was a large ship’s company, with a total number of one hundred
and thirty-five men, women, and children, and no more than a dozen
survivors succeeded in reaching the Dutch settlements after four months
of terrible suffering.

All the rest were killed or died or were missing, and among those who
vanished in the jungle were the captain and his party, with which were
most of the women and children. There was no trace of these English
women until a Colonel Gordon explored the country of the Kafir tribes
in 1788, and there met a native who said that a white woman dwelt among
his black people. “She had a child,” related the informant, “which she
frequently embraced, and wept bitterly.”

Bad health compelled Colonel Gordon to return homeward, but he promised
to reward the native if he would carry a letter to the white woman,
and he accordingly wrote in French, Dutch, and English, desiring that
some sign, such as a burnt stick or any other token, might be sent
back to him, and he would make every exertion to rescue her. The Kafir
undertook the mission with eagerness, but nothing more was ever heard
of him. An account of the wreck of the _Grosvenor_ written before 1812
stated:

“It is said by officers who have resided at the Cape that a general
belief prevailed of the existence of some of the unfortunate
females who survived the wreck. It was surmised that they might
have it in their power to return and leave the Kaffirs but,
apprehending that their place in society was lost and that they
should be degraded in the eyes of their equals after spending so
great a portion of their lives with savages who had compelled them
to a temporary union, they resolved not to forsake the fruits of
that union and therefore abode with the chiefs who had protected
them.”

In 1796 the American ship _Hercules_, Captain Benjamin Stout, was
wrecked on this same coast where the _Grosvenor_ had been lost. These
castaways were more fortunate, for the Kafirs and the Boers happened to
be at peace, and they made their way to the outlying farms of the white
pioneers in the Hottentot country. Captain Stout wrote the story of his
adventures, and a stirring yarn it is, but the reference of particular
interest just here is as follows:

This being, as I conceived, at no great distance from the spot
where the _Grosvenor_ was lost in 1782, I inquired whether any of
the natives remembered such a catastrophe. Most of them answered
in the affirmative and, ascending one of the sand hills, pointed
to the place where the _Grosvenor_ had suffered. I then desired
to know whether they had received any certain accounts respecting
the fate of Captain Coxon who was proceeding on his way to the
Cape with a large party of people, including several men and women
passengers that were saved from the wreck.

They answered that Captain Coxon and the men were slain. One of the
chiefs having insisted on taking two of the white ladies to his
kraal, the captain and his officers resisted and not being armed
were immediately destroyed. The natives at the same time gave me
to understand that at the period when the _Grosvenor_ was wrecked
their nation was at war with the colonists, and as Captain Coxon
and his crew were whites they could not tell but they would assist
the colonists.

The fate of the unfortunate English ladies gave me so much
uneasiness that I most earnestly requested the natives to tell me
all they knew of the situation, whether they were alive or dead,
and if living what part of the country they inhabited. They replied
with much apparent concern that one of the ladies had died a short
time after her arrival at the kraal, but they understood that the
other was living and had several children by the chief. “Where she
is now, we know not,” said they.

There was evidence of an earlier mystery of this mournful kind
when the _Doddington_ was wrecked on a rock in the Indian Ocean in
1755. Her crew built a boat in which they coasted along Natal, and
while ashore in search of food and water, “the English sailors were
extremely surprised to find among these savages, who were quite black,
with woolly hair, a youth apparently twelve or fourteen years of
age, perfectly white, with European features, fine, light hair, and
altogether different from the natives of this country, although he
spoke only their language. The people of the _Doddington_ remarked that
he was treated as a servant, that the savages sent him on their errands
and sometimes did not allow him to eat with them, but that he waited
until the end of the repast before making his own.”

CHAPTER VII

FOUR THOUSAND MILES IN AN OPEN BOAT

Of all the stories of blue water there is none so romantic and well
remembered as that of the mutineers of the _Bounty_ who sought an
Arcadia in the South Seas, and found it on Pitcairn Island, where their
descendants to-day welcome the occasional ship that stops in passing.
In 1787, ten years after Captain Cook had been slain by the natives of
Hawaii, a group of West India merchants in London, whose interest was
stirred by the glowing reports of the discoverers, urged the Government
to explore the natural resources of those enchanted realms of the
Pacific and particularly to transport the breadfruit tree to Jamaica
and plant it there.

The ship _Bounty_ was accordingly fitted out, and sailed in command of
Lieutenant William Bligh, who had been one of Cook’s officers. After
the long voyage to Tahiti, the ship tarried there five months while the
hold was filled with tropical trees and shrubs. With every prospect
of success, the _Bounty_ hove anchor and sheeted topsails to roll out
homeward bound.

Every sturdy British sailor was leaving a sweetheart on the beach of
languorous Tahiti, where the unspoiled, brown-skinned women were as
kind as they were beautiful, and where every dream of happiness was
attainable. These were the first white men who had ever lingered to
form sentimental attachments in that fortunate isle, and they left
it reluctantly to endure the bitter toil and tyranny that were the
mariner’s lot.

Nor was Lieutenant Bligh a commander to soothe their discontent. His
own narrative would lead you to infer that his conduct was blameless,
but other evidence convicts him of a harsh and inflexible temper and
a lack of tact which helped to bring about the disaster that was
brewing in the forecastle and among the groups of seamen who loafed
and whispered on deck during the dog-watches. The explosive crises
of life are very often touched off by the merest trifles and a few
cocoanuts appear to have played a part in the melodramatic upheaval of
the _Bounty’s_ crew. Boatswain’s Mate James Morrison kept a journal in
which he set down that Lieutenant Bligh missed some of his own personal
cocoanuts, which had been stowed between the guns.

The sailors solemnly denied stealing them, and the irate commander
questioned Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate, who indignantly
protested:

“I do not know who took your cocoanuts, sir, but I hope you do not
think me so mean as to be guilty of pilfering them.”

Lieutenant Bligh, who was red in the face and hot under the collar,
burst out in this most unlucky tirade:

“Yes, you hound, I do; you must have stolen them from me, or you would
be able to give a better account of them. You are all thieves, you
scoundrels, and the officers combine with the men to rob me. I suppose
you will steal my yams next, but I’ll make you sweat for it, you
rascals, if I have to make half of you jump overboard before we get
through Endeavor Straits.”

This is one of the stories told by the boatswain’s mate to extenuate
the mutiny, and it may be taken for what it is worth, though with so
much smoke, there was sure to be flame. At any rate, it was only a
day after the cocoanut episode that Fletcher Christian, the master’s
mate, led the famous rebellion of the _Bounty_. He was a leader of
extraordinary intelligence and character who had always led a godly
life. Commander Bligh had provoked him beyond endurance, and he was
persuaded that he could lead his comrades to a palm-shaded kingdom
where they would be safe against discovery and capture.

No inkling of the conspiracy was conveyed to the quarterdeck, and Bligh
wrote, after the event:

The women of Tahiti are handsome, mild, and cheerful in manners and
conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient
delicacy to make them admired and beloved. The chiefs were so much
attached to our people that they rather encouraged their stay
among them than otherwise and even made them promises of large
possessions. Under these circumstances it ought hardly to be the
subject of surprise that a set of sailors, most of them without
home ties, should be led away where they had the power of fixing
themselves in the midst of plenty and where there was no necessity
to labor and where the allurements to dissipation are beyond any
conception that can be formed of it. The utmost, however, that a
commander could have expected was desertions, such as have always
happened more or less in the South Seas, and not this act of open
mutiny, the secrecy of which was beyond belief.

It was a bloodless uprising and conducted with singular neatness and
despatch. At sunrise of April 28, 1789, Fletcher Christian and an armed
guard entered the commander’s cabin and hauled him out of bed in his
night-shirt. His arms were bound, and he was led on deck, where he
observed that some of his men were hoisting out a boat. Those of the
ship’s company who had remained loyal, seventeen officers and men, were
already clapped under hatches to await their turn in the very orderly
program. A few of the mutineers damned the commander to his face
and growled threats at him, but this was by way of squaring personal
grudges, and he was not otherwise mistreated.

The boat was lowered and outfitted with twine, canvas, cordage, an
eight-and-twenty gallon cask of water, a hundred and fifty pounds of
bread, or ship’s biscuit, a little rum and wine, some salt pork and
beef, a quadrant, a compass, and four cutlasses for arms. The seventeen
loyal mariners were bundled overside, but Lieutenant Bligh hung back to
argue the matter until Fletcher Christian roughly exclaimed:

“Come, Captain Bligh, your officers and men are now in the boat and you
must go with them. If you attempt to make the least resistance, you
will be instantly put to death.”

The commander of the _Bounty_ was in no mood to carry it off with a
high hand. He implored the master’s mate to forego the mad enterprise,
and pledged his honor that if the men would return to duty he would
make no report of it in England. He spoke of his own wife and children
and the mercy due on their account, but Fletcher Christian cut him
short and cried:

“I say no, no, Captain Bligh. If you had any honor or manly feeling in
your breast, things had not come to this. Your wife and family! Had
you any regard for them, you would have thought of them before now and
not behaved so like a villain. I have been used like a dog all this
voyage and am determined to bear it no longer. On you must rest the
consequences.”

This ended the argument, and the boat was soon cast adrift, while the
mutineers shouted a cheery farewell, and then roared out “Huzza for
Tahiti!” while the _Bounty_ swung off and filled away with a pleasant
breeze. Lieutenant Bligh assumed that it was the deliberate intent to
leave him to perish, because dead men tell no tales; but if this were
true, the mutineers would not have been so careful to stock the boat
with food and water and stores to last the party at least a fortnight
without severe hardship.

They were within easy sailing distance of peopled islands, on some of
which they might hope to find a friendly reception. By drowning them,
Fletcher Christian could have obliterated all traces of the mutiny, and
the _Bounty_ would have vanished from human ken, gone to the port of
missing ships. 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. Even to
this day it deserves to be called one of the prodigious adventures of
seafaring history. A man disgraced and humiliated beyond expression by
the ridiculously easy manner in which his ship had been taken from him,
Bligh superbly redeemed himself and wiped the stain from his record by
keeping his open boat afloat and his men alive through a voyage and an
experience unequaled before or since.

The boat was a small, undecked ship’s yawl only twenty-three feet
long, such as one may see hanging from a schooner’s davits. Eighteen
men were crowded upon the thwarts, and their weight sank her almost
to the gunwale. They were adrift in an unknown ocean which teemed
with uncharted reefs and perils, there was only a few days’ supply of
food and water, and four cutlasses were the weapons against hostile
attack. In the boat, besides Commander Bligh, were the master, the
acting surgeon, botanist, gunner, boatswain, carpenter, three mates,
two quartermasters, the sail-maker, two cooks, the ship’s clerk, the
butcher, and a boy.

After watching the faithless _Bounty_ until she gleamed like a bit of
cloud, the refugees shoved out their oars and pulled in the direction
of the nearest island, Tofa, about forty miles distant. A slant of wind
presently favored them, and they hoisted sail, bowling along until
they were able to drop anchor outside the barrier of surf soon after
nightfall of the same day.

Next morning they landed in a cove and found natives who seemed amiable
enough and who supplied them with cocoanuts, plantains, breadfruit,
and water. The humor of these temperamental islanders changed without
warning, however, and in a sudden attack with stones and spears they
killed one of the quartermasters. This dissuaded Bligh from his plan
of cruising from one island to another and so making his way to
civilization. He told his men that he purposed to attempt to make no
more landings, but to steer for the Dutch East Indies and the port of
Timor, almost four thousand miles away. In those wild seas there was
no nearer haven where they might hope to find Europeans and a ship to
carry them home to England.

In the confusion of escaping from Tofa, they lost most of the fruit
which had been taken on there, and so they set sail with just about
the amount of stores with which they had been set adrift from the
_Bounty_, but with one less man to feed. They were so cramped for
space in the yawl that Bligh divided them into watches, and half the
men sat upon the cross-seats while the others lay down in the bottom,
and every two hours they exchanged places. The bread was stowed in
the carpenter’s tool-chest, and all the provisions were scrupulously
guarded by sentries.

There were no symptoms of mutiny in this company. Bligh had found
himself, and he ruled them with a rod of iron. They were willing and
obedient, realizing that this imperious, unshaken commander was their
only hope of winning against the odds which loomed black against them.
Timor was merely a name to them. Some of them did not even know where
it was, but they had implicit faith in Lieutenant William Bligh.

The carpenter whittled for him a pair of scales and some musket-balls
were found in the boat. These were known to weigh twenty-five to the
pound of sixteen ounces. In order to make the provisions last as long
as possible, three meals a day were served, and each consisted of a
musket-ball’s weight of bread, an ounce of pork, and a teaspoonful of
rum in a quarter of a pint of water. 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.

They passed within sight of many islands, green and smiling, and smoke
wreathed skyward from native camps and villages, but Bligh sternly
checked his men when they yearned to seek the land and a respite from
the merciless sea. With him it was Timor or die, and in the lonely
watches he recalled that previous voyage with Captain Cook, when the
great navigator was lured to his death by the soft-voiced, garlanded
people of Oahu. And so the open boat flitted past the mysterious
beaches and lagoons of the New Hebrides and veered farther seaward to
give a wide berth to the savage coast of New Guinea. After one of the
numerous storms which almost swamped them, Bligh noted in his diary:

I found every person complaining and some of them requested extra
allowance. I positively refused. Our situation was miserable,
always wet and suffering extreme cold in the night, without the
least shelter from the weather. Being constantly compelled to bale
the boat to keep her from filling perhaps should not have been
reckoned an evil because it gave us exercise. Our appearance was
shocking and several of my people seemed half-dead. I could look no
way without catching the eye of some one in distress. The little
sleep we got was in the midst of water and we always awoke with
severe cramps and pains in our bones.

This was on May 22, or eighteen days after they had left the island
of Tofa, during most of which time there had been drenching rains and
somber skies and heavy seas, which broke into the boat and almost
swamped her time and again. The seventeen men were still existing
on the morsels of bread and pork carefully weighed out with the
musket-ball, which they said was “little better than starving,” but
Bligh held them in hand, and there was no rebellion even when he
explained that the system of rationing would permit them to exist for
twenty-nine days longer, though he was not at all certain that they
could fetch Timor in that time, and he purposed to make the stores hold
out for six weeks.

In order to do that they would have to omit their supper and get along
on two meals of a twenty-fifth of a pound of bread. “I was apprehensive
that a proposal on this head would be ill received,” Lieutenant Bligh
commented, “and that it would require my utmost resolution to enforce
it. However, on representing to the people the necessity of guarding
against casual delays, from adverse winds, and other causes, they all
cheerfully assented.”

There was never a more methodical man than this Lieutenant William
Bligh. When they caught a couple of boobies, sea-fowl as large as a
duck, the bodies were divided into seventeen portions, and one man
was detailed to turn his back while another pointed at the pieces
and asked, “Who is to have this?” The first sailor named a companion
at random, and drew the fragment designated. In this manner a fair
distribution was assured, and the man who drew the feet of the bird to
chew could have no quarrel with the lucky sailor who got a bit of the
breast.

Bligh was a capable navigator with the quadrant and compass which
the mutineers had given him and he was driving for a passage to the
southward of Endeavor Straits and an offing on the coast of New
Holland, as Australia was then called. His crew was exceedingly
low-spirited, but he diverted them with the hope of finding smoother
water inside the far-flung reefs and a landing where they might eat
fresh fruits and ease their weary bones for a little while.

After three weeks of misery, this speck of an open boat in a trackless
waste of ocean descried the wooded headlands of New Holland and a surf
which beat against the outer ramparts of coral. They found an opening
and rowed into a lagoon, where they hauled the boat out upon the white
sand and feasted luxuriously on oysters. These they roasted in a fire
which Lieutenant Bligh kindled with a lens of his spy-glass. Then
they cooked a stew, and were so mightily refreshed that “all retained
strength and fortitude sufficient to resist what might be expected in
our voyage to Timor.”

Two or three days of assiduous attention to the oysters, and they were
ready to put to sea again, with water-breakers filled. Before they
shoved off, Bligh directed all hands to attend prayers; so they knelt
on the beach with bared heads while he read service from the Church
of England prayer-book. A group of natives, black and naked, came
scampering out of the forest just as the boat took the water, but there
was no clash with them.

As they steered through the mazes of the Malay Archipelago, many small
islands swam in the seas of azure and emerald, and they ventured to
land again. Here Bligh had the first trouble with the tempers of his
sick and weary men. “When ordered to go scouting for food, one of them
went so far as to tell me, with a mutinous look, that he was as good a
man as myself,” relates this inflexible commander who had made such a
sorry mess of things in the _Bounty_. He added:

“It was impossible for me to judge where this might end, therefore
to prevent such disputes in future I determined either to preserve
my authority or die in the attempt. Seizing a cutlass I ordered
him to take hold of another and defend himself; on which he cried
out that I was going to kill him and immediately made concessions.
I did not allow this to interfere further with the harmony of the
boat’s crew and everything soon became quiet.”

For a week they coasted along New Holland in this manner before risking
the open sea again. They caught some turtle and went ashore at night
to hunt the noddies, or sea-birds, and knock them over on their nests.
One of the sailors, Robert Lamb, stole away from his companions,
contrary to orders, and blundered into the birds, which fled away.
Much provoked, Bligh gave the culprit a drubbing and made him confess
that he had eaten nine noddies raw. It goes without saying that greedy
Robert Lamb promised not to do it again.

Much more sanguine of some day reaching the destination of Timor,
the argonauts endured another long stretch of the voyage, almost two
thousand miles more, but it was fast breaking the strength which they
had so amazingly displayed. Surgeon Ledward and Lawrence Lebogue, a
hardy old salt, seemed to have come to the end, and Bligh nursed them
with teaspoonfuls of wine and crumbs of bread that he had been saving
for such emergencies. He now began to fear that the party could not
survive to finish the voyage, and mentioned that

extreme weakness, swelled legs, hollow and ghastly countenances,
with an apparent debility of understanding, seemed to me the
melancholy presages of approaching dissolution. The boatswain very
innocently told me that he really thought I looked worse than any
one in the boat. I was amused by the simplicity with which he
uttered such an opinion and returned him a better compliment.

It was not decreed by destiny that courage and endurance so heroic
should be thwarted in the last gasp. Forty-one days after they had so
boldly set out from Tofa in the South Seas they made a landfall on
the dim and misty shore of the island of Timor. The log recorded a
total distance sailed of 3618 nautical miles, which in round numbers
amounts to four thousand land, or statute, miles. No wonder that the
feat appeared scarcely credible to these castaways themselves whom
the mutineers of the _Bounty_ had turned adrift with no more than a
fortnight’s provisions in a fearfully overcrowded open boat. And every
man of the seventeen was alive and ready to be patched up and set on
his feet again.

Bligh had no idea where the Dutch settlements were, so he held on
along the coast, past very lovely landscapes of mountain, woodland,
and park-like spaces. Coming to a large bay, he tacked in and saw a
little village of thatched huts. Natives paddled out to meet the boat
and told the party where to find the Dutch governor of Timor. In the
next harbor they discovered two square-rigged vessels, so they hoisted
the union jack as a distress-signal, and anchored off the fort and town
of Coupang. This was the end of their troubles. Bligh bought a small
schooner from the courteous Dutch governor, and so carried his men to
Samarang, where they found passage to Batavia, and were sent home in a
Dutch East Indiaman.

It was Commander Bligh himself who took to England the first tidings
of the mutiny of the _Bounty_, which aroused great popular interest
and indignation. In 1790 he published an account of his sufferings
and the heroic voyage to Timor, and in response to the public clamor
the Admiralty speedily fitted out the frigate _Pandora_ to hunt down
Fletcher Christian and his fellow-criminals and fetch them home for
trial and punishment. The voyage of the _Pandora_ resulted in tragic
shipwreck and another sensational episode of open boats. As a sequel
it is inseparable from the strange and unhappy romance of the _Bounty_
and her people.

Captain Edwards of the _Pandora_ frigate was a martinet of a naval
officer, without sympathy or imagination, and the witchery of the South
Seas held no lure for him. His errand was to run down the mutineers as
outlaws who deserved no mercy and to take them home to be hanged.

First touching at Tahiti, the _Pandora_ found that a number of the
sentimental sinners still remained on that island, but that Fletcher
Christian and the rest had sailed away in the _Bounty_ to search for
a retreat elsewhere. With a hundred and fifty bluejackets to rake the
valleys and beaches of Tahiti, Captain Edwards soon rounded up fourteen
fugitives, who were marched aboard the _Pandora_ and clapped into irons.

[Illustration: EARLY AMERICAN SHIP OF THE 18TH CENTURY]

A small house was knocked together on deck to serve as a jail for them,
and was rightly enough dubbed “Pandora’s Box” by the sailors. It was
only eleven feet long, without windows or doors, and was entered by a
scuttle in the roof. In this inhuman little den the fourteen mutineers
were kept with their arms and legs in irons, which were never
removed to permit exercise. Sweltering in a tropical climate, the
wonder is that they did not perish to a man.

There was suffering far worse to endure, however--the anguish of broken
hearts. All of these men were torn from the native wives to whom they
had been faithful and true, and their infants were left fatherless.
Pitiful was the story of “Peggy,” the beautiful Tahitian girl who was
beloved by Midshipman Stewart of the mutineers and to whom she had
borne a child. She was allowed to visit him in the wretched deck-house
of the _Pandora_, but her grief was so violent that she had to be taken
ashore by force, and the young husband begged the officers not to let
her see him again.

The light of her life had gone out, and she died of sorrow a few months
later, leaving her infant son as the first half-caste born in Tahiti.
Six years after this, a band of pioneering English missionaries visited
Tahiti and heard of the boy and his story. They took this orphan of
British blood under their own care and brought him up and educated him.

It is quite evident that Captain Edwards isolated his prisoners and
treated them so harshly because of his fear that the bluejackets of his
frigate might be stirred to a sympathetic mutiny of their own. It must
have wrung the hearts of these honest British tars, who had sweethearts
waiting at the end of the long road home, when, as the story runs:

The families of the captives were allowed to visit them, a
permission which gave rise to the most affecting scenes. Every day
the wives came down with their infants in their arms, the fathers
weeping over their babes who were soon to be bereft of paternal
care and protection, and husband and wife mingling cries and tears
at the prospect of so calamitous a separation.

The fourteen mutineers had built a little schooner only thirty-five
feet long, in which they were hoping to flee to an island more remote,
but the _Pandora_ swooped down before they were quite ready to embark.
Captain Edwards seized this vessel to use as a tender, and manned her
with two petty officers and seven sailors, who sailed away on a cruise
of their own to assist in the search for the rest of the pirates, as
they were called. The voyage of this tiny cock-boat of a schooner is
one of the most remarkable tales in the history of South Sea discovery,
but not even a diary or log remains to relate it in detail.

These adventurers were the first white men to set foot on the great
group of the Fiji Islands, which Tasman and Cook had passed by. The
exploit is sung to this day in one of the poems of the Fijian language
which have handed down the traditions of the race from father to son.
The little schooner was never seen again by the _Pandora_ after they
parted at Tahiti to go their separate ways; but after many months the
master’s mate, the bold midshipman, and the seven handy seamen who
comprised the crew came sailing into the Dutch East Indies.

The _Pandora_ ransacked the South Seas in vain for Fletcher Christian
and his party, and turned homeward after nine months of cruising on
this quest. Having cleared the coast of New Guinea, the frigate crashed
into the Great Barrier Reef while trying to find a passage through, and
foundered after eleven hours of endeavor to keep her afloat by pumping.
The discipline was admirable, and in the ship’s dying flurry four boats
were filled and sent away, besides some rafts and canoes.

During those long hours, however, while the sailors were trying to save
themselves and the frigate, the hapless mutineers were left in the
“Pandora’s Box,” in leg-irons and manacles and utterly helpless. Three
of them were finally allowed to work at the pumps, still wearing their
chains, but Captain Edwards paid no heed to the prayers of the others,
who foresaw they were to drown like rats in a trap. It was inhumanity
almost beyond belief, for these prisoners could not have escaped if
they had been released and allowed to swim for it with the rest of the
crew.

His own officers and men interceded and begged permission to knock
the shackles off the mutineers before the ship went down, but
Captain Edwards threatened to shoot the first man who interfered
with his orders, and to kill any of the captives who attempted to
free themselves. He was the type of officer who is blindly, densely
zealous and regards the letter of the law as to be obeyed under all
circumstances. The Admiralty had told him to bring these fugitives back
to England in chains. This settled the matter for him.

When the _Pandora_ was about to plunge under, a council of officers
formally decided “that nothing more could be done for the preservation
of His Majesty’s ship.” The command was then given to quit her before
she carried the crew to the bottom, but even then two sentries of the
Royal Marines guarded the scuttle of “Pandora’s Box” with instructions
to shoot if the mutineers tried to smash their irons.

The master-at-arms was a man with a heart, as well as a ready wit, and
as he scrambled over the roof of the deck-house with the sea racing
at his heels, he dropped his bunch of keys through the open scuttle.
The frantic prisoners heard the keys fall and knew what they meant. In
semi-darkness, with the water gurgling over the floor of their pen,
they strove to fit the keys to the heavy handcuffs and the chains that
were locked about their legs. It is a scene that requires no more
words to appeal to the emotions a hundred and thirty years after these
unhappy British sailors fought their last fight for life.

Ten of them succeeded in releasing themselves and were washed off into
the sea, where the boats were kind enough to pick them up, but four of
the mutineers were drowned with the ship, still wearing the irons from
which Captain Edwards had refused to free them. It is probable that
with the bunch of keys which the master-at-arms had dropped among them
these four men had died while doing unto others as they would have been
done by. It was almost impossible for a prisoner so heavily manacled
to fit a key in the padlock that bound his own wrists together. One
comrade helped another, perhaps, and so those who awaited their turn
were doomed to die. And thus they redeemed the folly and the crime of
that fantastic adventure in the _Bounty_.

Thirty men of the _Pandora’s_ company were also drowned, but the
survivors made a successful voyage of it in their open boats, across
a thousand miles of the Indian Ocean, and reached the same Dutch port
of Coupang where Lieutenant William Bligh had found refuge. Here they
met the actors in still another thrilling drama of an open boat. A
party of British convicts, including a woman and two small children,
had stolen away from the penal settlement of Port Jackson on the coast
of Australia in a ship’s gig, and had fled by sea all the way to Timor,
living on shell-fish and seabirds and surviving ten weeks of exposure
and peril.

They told the Dutch governor at Coupang that they were castaways from
an English ship, and he believed the tale until the people of the
_Pandora_ came into port. Assuming they were survivors of the same
wreck, a Dutch officer remarked to one of the convicts that the captain
of their ship had reached Coupang. Caught off his guard, the fellow
blurted:

“Dam’ me! We have no captain.”

The cat was out of the bag, and the slip proved fatal. Haled before the
governor, the runaways confessed who they really were. The tale they
told was interwoven with a romance. The leader of the party, William
Bryant, had been transported to Botany Bay for the crime of smuggling,
and with him went his sweetheart, Mary Broad, who was convicted of
helping him to escape from Winchester Gaol. They were married by the
chaplain of Botany Bay, and Bryant was detailed to catch fish for the
table of the governor and other officials of that distressful colony.
It was while employed as a fisherman that he was able to steal a boat
and plan the escape, and they carried their two children with them.

His Excellency, the Dutch governor of Timor, admired their courage,
but he could not be turned from his duty, and the runaway convicts
were therefore sent to England. During the voyage William Bryant, the
two children, and three men of the party died, but the woman lived,
and so rapidly regained her bloom and beauty that before the _Gorgon_,
East Indiaman, sighted the forelands of England, an officer of the
Royal Marines had fallen in love with her. Through his efforts she was
granted a full pardon, and they were wedded and lived happily ever
after, so far as we know. Many a novel has paraded a heroine less
worthy than this smuggler’s sweetheart, Mary Broad of Devonshire and
Botany Bay.

Of the ten _Bounty_ mutineers who survived the wreck of the _Pandora_,
five were acquitted, two received the king’s pardon, and three were
hanged from a yard-arm of H. M. S. _Brunswick_ in Portsmouth Harbor
on October 29, 1792. Of Fletcher Christian and his companions who had
vanished in the _Bounty_ nothing whatever was heard or known, and
England forgot all about them. Twenty-five years passed, and they had
become almost legendary, one of those mysteries which inspire the
conjectures and gossip of idle hours in ship’s forecastles.

In 1813 a fleet of British merchantmen sailed for India convoyed by
the frigate _Briton_, Captain Sir Thomas Staines. While passing the
Marquesas group he discovered a fertile island on which were cultivated
fields and a village and people who eagerly paddled out in their canoes
to hail the frigate. The captain was trying to shout a few words of
the Marquesan language to them when a stalwart youth called out in
perfectly good English:

“What is the ship’s name? And who is the commander, if you please?”

Dumfounded, the bluejackets swarmed to the bulwark to haul the visitors
aboard, and while they wondered, the same young man asked of the
quarter-deck:

“Do you know Captain William Bligh in England, and is he still alive?”

The riddle was solved. Captain Staines replied to the courteous,
fair-skinned stranger:

“Do you know one Fletcher Christian and where is he?”

“Yes, sir. He is dead, but there is his son, Friday Fletcher October
Christian, just coming aboard from the next boat.”

These interesting dwellers on Pitcairn Island were invited to breakfast
in the ward-room, “but before sitting down to table they fell on
their knees and with uplifted hands implored the blessing of Heaven
on the meal of which they were about to partake. At the close of the
repast they resumed the same attitude and breathed a fervent prayer of
thanksgiving for the bounty which they had just experienced.”

Captain Staines went ashore with his guests and found a very beautiful
village, the houses set around a small park, the streets immaculately
clean, the whole aspect of it extraordinarily attractive. There were
forty-eight of these islanders, including seven of the Tahitian wives
who had been brought in the _Bounty_. The others were children, and
fine young men and girls. Of the fathers of the flock only one was
left alive, John Adams, a sturdy, dignified man of sixty, who welcomed
Captain Staines and frankly revealed the whole story of the _Bounty_,
“admitting that by following the fortunes of Fletcher Christian he had
lost every right to his country and that his life was even forfeited
to the laws. He was now at the head of a little community by whom he
was adored and whom he carefully instructed in the duties of religion,
industry, and friendship.”

It was explained by John Adams that the native women had preferred the
British sailors to their own suitors, which inspired a fatal jealousy,
and Fletcher Christian and most of his comrades had been killed in
quarrels and uprisings against them. The few survivors had founded
a new race in this dreamy island of the South Seas, and, as Captain
Staines perceived, “a society bearing no stamp of the guilty origin
from which it sprung.”

John Adams, the admirable counselor and ruler, had taught them to use
the English tongue and to cherish all that was good in the institutions
of their mother country. He had even taught the children to read and
write by means of a slate and a stone pencil. They were a vigorous,
wholesome stock, sheltered from disease and vice, and with a sailor’s
eye for a pretty girl Captain Staines noted that “the young women
had invariable beautiful teeth, fine eyes, and an open expression
of countenance, with an engaging air of simple innocence and sweet
sensibility.”

The captain gave John Adams what books and writing-materials he could
spare, and the crew of the frigate added many a gift of clothing and
useful trinkets from their ditty-boxes. Twelve years passed before
any other word was heard from Pitcairn Island, and then the ship
_Blossom_ made a call. It was found that a wandering whaler had left
a seaman named John Buffet, who felt called to serve as schoolmaster
and clergyman to the grateful islanders. England now became interested
in this idyllic colony, and there was no desire to recall or avenge
the mutiny of the _Bounty_. John Adams had long since atoned for the
misdeeds of himself and his misguided shipmates, and his good works
were to live after him.

In 1830, H. M. S. _Seringapatam_ was sent out by the British Government
to carry a cargo of agricultural implements, tools, live-stock, and
many other things which might increase the happiness and well-being
of the people of Pitcairn Island. John Adams had passed away a little
while before that, full of years and honor, and it may be safely
assumed that he was not logged on the books of the recording angel as a
mutineer. The mantle of his leadership fell upon the broad shoulders of
Friday Fletcher October Christian.

It was only a year or so ago that the generous captain of a freight
steamer bound out across the South Pacific wrote a letter to a New
York newspaper to inform the public that he would be glad to go out of
his course to touch at Pitcairn Island and leave any books or other
gifts which might be sent in his care. It was near the Christmas
season, and the spirit moved him to play Santa Claus to the people of
that happy island whose forefathers were the mutineers of the _Bounty_
in the year of 1789.

CHAPTER VIII

FRIGATES THAT VANISHED IN THE SOUTH SEAS

When our forefathers were fighting in the Revolution, which was not so
very long ago in history, the world was a vastly entertaining place
for a man who loved to wander in quest of bold adventures. Nowadays
the unknown seas have all been charted, and it is not easy to realize
that a great part of the watery globe was unexplored and trackless
when George Washington led his ragged Continentals. There were no
lean, hard-bitten Australian troops to rally to the call of the mother
country when England was fighting most of Europe as well as the
American Colonies, because not a solitary Briton had then set foot upon
the mighty continent of the South Pacific.

For three centuries the high-pooped merchant ships and the roving
buccaneers of all flags had been sailing on the trade routes to the
New World and to the East Indies, but scarcely a solitary keel had
furrowed the immense expanse of blue water which is called the South
Seas. Daring traders as were the old skippers of Salem, it was not
until 1811 that the first of them, in the bark _Active_, bartered a
cargo with the Fiji Islanders, and he was only four years later than
the pioneer ship of the British East India Company.

In the rivalry for the honors of discovery, France was moved by the
desire to continue on the sea the illustrious traditions of her great
explorers who had won empire in North America. The peace of Versailles
in 1783 had ended her conflict with England, and although that absurd
blockhead of a monarch, Louis XVI, was far more interested in exploring
the menu of his next meal, there were noble spirits eager to win
victories in peace as well as in war, and they persuaded the ministry
to send a splendidly equipped expedition to the mysterious Pacific and
the legendary coasts of Asia. Their choice of a leader was Captain
Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de la Pérouse, soldier and sailor, who
had proved his mettle by destroying the Hudson’s Bay posts as an act of
war, and thereby wringing with anguish the hearts of the directors of
that opulent British company.

La Pérouse is a shadowy name to this generation and wholly forgotten
by most of us, but he was a great and gallant gentleman who was of the
rare company of those that wrought enduring deeds in a younger, ruder
world, and so helped to build for those who should come after him.
It was his fate to vanish with his ships, and so utterly were those
fine frigates and their hundreds of sailors erased from the seas that
no fragment of tidings was discovered for almost forty years. Their
disappearance was one of the sensations of an era in which shipwrecks
were so frequent that they had to be quite extraordinary to arouse
public attention.

The two frigates carried an elaborate party of scientists, which
included a geographer, a civil engineer, a noted surgeon, an
astronomer, a physicist, a botanist, and a clock-maker. They were
prepared to survey, map, and investigate any distant shores which
had been overlooked by the persistent English, Dutch, and Portuguese
navigators. It was typical of French thoroughness that “Fleurien, the
superintendent of ports and arsenals, contributed an entire volume of
learned notes and discussions upon the results of all known voyages
since the time of Christopher Columbus.”

Laden with all manner of stores and merchandise the two ships _La
Boussole_ and _L’Astrolabe_ sailed bravely out of the ancient port of
Brest on August 30, 1785. By way of Madeira they ran the long slant
across the Atlantic to Brazil, and during this first leg of the voyage
La Pérouse showed himself to be a wonderfully capable leader. Those
old wooden war-ships were so many pest-houses, as a rule, in which
sailors sickened and died by scores during prolonged periods of sea
duty. The quarters in which the men were crowded were wet and foul
and unventilated in rough weather, and the diet of salt meat bred the
disease of scurvy. The journal of this voyage says:

After ninety-six days’ navigation we had not one case of illness
on board. The health of the crew had remained unimpaired by change
of climate, rain, and fog; but our provisions were of first-class
quality; I neglected none of the precautions which experience and
prudence suggested to me; and above all, we kept up our spirits
by encouraging dancing every evening among the crew whenever the
weather permitted.

Around Cape Horn and to the Sandwich Islands, which Captain Cook had
discovered only a few years earlier, the lonely frigates steered their
wandering course, and then northward to the Alaskan coast of America.
While exploring a bay among the glaciers two boats were swamped and
lost in the breakers, and the shipmates of the drowned officers and men
built a monument of stone with this epitaph carved upon it:

At this entrance of this port, twenty-one brave sailors perished.
Whoever you may be, mingle your tears with ours.

Thence La Pérouse coasted down to Monterey Bay, and was cordially
welcomed among the Spanish missions of California. He had it in mind
to cross the unknown stretches of the Pacific, and so set out to
reach China by a new sailing route. This brought him within sight
of Guam, where he landed, and then he touched at Manila. Next he
explored Formosa and the coast of Tartary, and tarried awhile among the
primitive fishing folk of Saghalin and Kamchatka. It was pleasanter
when the frigates turned southward again and floated in the warm
and tranquil South Seas. The second in command, M. de Langle, was
killed during a clash with the natives of the Navigator Islands, and
thirty-two of the French sailors were slain or wounded while trying to
fill the water-casks.

Short-handed and dismayed by this tragedy, La Pérouse went to Botany
Bay, Australia, where the English were just then beginning to establish
a colony, in order to send his sick and wounded ashore and to refit
his worn, weary ships. They had been away from France almost three
years, and the frigates hoisted sails that were patched and threadbare
until it seemed as though a breeze would blow them from the yards. The
clothes of the men were no better. The paint was weather-worn on the
sides and bulwarks, weeds and barnacles grew thick on the planking,
and the decks were cracked and blistered by tropical suns. They were
like the phantom ships of some old sailor’s yarn.

Yet La Pérouse was ready to go on with his quest, nor was there any
sign of mutiny among his men. Most of them were hard and brown and
healthy, and ready to follow him to other ends of the earth. It was his
purpose to depart from Botany Bay and explore the Australian coast and
the Friendly Islands, and finally to lay his course to reach Mauritius,
in the Indian Ocean, at the end of the year of 1788. This was the last
word that came from him to France. Two more years passed, and not a
ship had sighted the roving frigates, nor had they been seen in any
port. The people of France were proud of La Pérouse and his romantic
achievements, and although the unhappy nation was in the throes of
revolution, the National Assembly passed a decree which read in part:

That the King be entreated to give orders to all ambassadors,
residents, consuls, and national agents at the courts of foreign
powers that they may engage those different sovereigns, in the name
of humanity and of the arts and sciences, to charge all navigators
and agents whatsoever, their subjects, in whatever place they may
be, but especially in the southerly part of the South Sea, to
make inquiry after the two French frigates, _La Boussole_ and
_L’Astrolabe_, commanded by M. de la Pérouse as well as after their
crews, and to obtain every information which may ascertain their
existence or their shipwreck; so that in case M. de la Pérouse,
and his companions should be found, no matter in what place, there
shall be given to them every assistance, and all means procured
for them, that they may be enabled to return to their country with
whatever may belong to them.

It is further decreed that the King be entreated to direct that one
or more vessels be equipped and several learned and experienced
persons embarked therein, to the commanders of which may be given
in charge the double mission, to search after M. de la Pérouse
and also at the same time to render this expedition useful and
advantageous to navigation, to geography, and to the arts and
sciences.

This hope of rescue appealed to the quick imagination of France. La
Pérouse was a national hero. It was argued, with good reason, that
he might be waiting on some solitary island of those empty seas
where topsails had never yet lifted above the blue horizon. Again
two frigates were elaborately fitted out at Brest, and rechristened,
with a pretty touch of sentiment, _la Recherche_ (The _Research_) and
_L’Esperance_ (The _Hope_). They sailed early in 1791, touching at the
Cape of Good Hope, where the vice-admiral in command got wind of a
curious rumor that “near the Admiralty Islands in the Pacific Ocean the
captain of a British sloop-of-war had seen men dressed in the European
style and in what he took to be French uniforms.”

This fanned the spark of expectation and seemed a promising trail to
follow, but the most careful search failed to confirm the report. Among
the reefs and islands the frigates cruised in vain until they had been
away from home more than two years. Then without finding a trace of La
Pérouse and all his gallant officers and patient, resolute seamen, they
sailed to the Dutch East Indies. There they received amazing news from
their beloved France. Louis XVI had been beheaded, and the agonized
republic was at war with the armies of Europe. The Dutch officials of
Sourabaya, regarding all Frenchmen as lawful enemies, held the crew of
the frigates as prisoners, and this was the end of the search for La
Pérouse.

The people of storm-tossed France had other things to think of, and
they forgot all about the lost explorer and his ships’ companies.
There was reason to believe that some of them were alive when the two
frigates had been trying to find them. In 1791 Captain Edwards was
roaming the South Seas in the British frigate _Pandora_, whose mission
was to run down and carry home for punishment the famous mutineers
of the _Bounty_. He sighted the island of Vanikoro and ran along its
shore, no more than a mile outside the barrier reef. In his log he
noted that natives appeared to be attempting to communicate with him
by means of smoke signals. Captain Edwards was a brave, but stupid,
officer of the Royal Navy, and it failed to occur to him that the
natives of this little island, which had been undiscovered until
then, would be most unlikely to try to talk to him in this manner.
In the light of later information there is every probability that
this smoke was made by survivors of La Pérouse’s party, and they were
still marooned on Vanikoro several years after their shipwreck. Their
emotions must have been profoundly melancholy when they saw the tall
British frigate glide past unheeding and drop from their wistful vision.

It was not until 1813 that the first thread of this tangled skein of
mystery was disclosed. La Pérouse had vanished a quarter of a century
before, and his ships were long since listed on the sadly eloquent
roll of “missing with all hands.” It is hard to astonish a deep-water
sailor, because nothing is too strange to happen at sea. The British
merchantman _Hunter_, on a voyage from Calcutta to New South Wales and
Canton, stopped at the Fiji Islands to pick up some sandalwood and
_bêche-de-mer_ by way of turning over a few dollars in trade. Already
the beach-comber had begun to find a refuge from toil in the South
Sea Islands, and Fiji was plagued with runaway sailors whose idea of
paradise was to loaf and get drunk and dance with the girls.

While the _Hunter_ was taking on her cargo, a party of these salt-water
vagabonds engaged in a murderous row with the natives, who decided
to be rid of them. The earnest intention of the embattled Fijian
warriors was to exterminate their European guests. The chief mate of
the _Hunter_, Mr. Dillon, happened to be ashore with a boat’s crew, and
he was a lusty man in a shindy, as his name might indicate. Out of the
mêlée he succeeded in hauling a German beach-comber, Martin Bushart,
who seems to have been a sober, decent fellow, and a Lascar sailor.
They were taken off to the ship and allowed to remain there.

When the _Hunter_ sailed for China, this derelict of a Martin Bushart
made the singular request of Chief Officer Dillon that he be landed on
the first island that happened to be convenient to the vessel’s course.
Dillon’s story fails to explain why this simple-minded “Prussian,” as
he called him, should have desired to run the risk of being killed and
perhaps eaten after he had escaped by the narrowest margin. However,
the captain and the mate of the _Hunter_ were obliging mariners who
sensibly concluded that it was a man’s own business if he yearned to
hop from the frying-pan into the fire, and so they let the ship go
toward the first land sighted after leaving Fiji.

This happened to be the island of Tucopia, and if you care to prick it
off on the chart, Chief Officer Dillon gives the position as latitude
12° 15´ S. and longitude 169° E. The Lascar sailor who also had been
saved from the irate Fijians and their uplift movement elected to seek
this new place of exile along with Martin Bushart as a sort of Man
Friday to a Prussian Robinson Crusoe, and so the singular pair were
left on the beach of Tucopia, where they waved an unperturbed farewell,
while the _Hunter_ hoisted colors and fired a gun to express her
regards and best wishes. What kind of welcome the natives extended them
is left to conjecture.

Mr. Dillon, when it came to writing about the episodes, unconsciously
employed the trick of the playwright who permits so many years to
elapse between the acts of the drama. Nothing could be more concise
than his method of joining the facts together. He tells us:

We landed Martin Bushart and the Lascar on this island the 20th
September, 1813. On the 13th of May, 1826, in command of my own
ship, the _St. Patrick_, bound from Valparaiso to Pondicherry, I
came in sight of the island of Tucopia. Prompted by curiosity,
as well as regard for an old companion in danger, I hove my ship
to off the island of Tucopia. Shortly a canoe put off from the
island and came alongside. In it was the Lascar. Immediately after
another canoe came off with Martin Bushart, the Prussian. They were
both in sound health and were extremely rejoiced to see me. They
informed me that the natives had treated them kindly; that no ship
had touched there from the time they were first landed until about
a year previous to my arrival when an English whaler visited the
island for a short time.

Captain Dillon mentions the dates in a very casual fashion, but some
years had elapsed with a vengeance--thirteen of them, in fact--during
twelve of which Martin Bushart had dwelt contentedly without seeing the
face of another white man. The ties that bound him to his island had
been strong enough to hold him there when the chance was offered to
sail away in the English whaler.

While the pair of them were visiting Captain Dillon on board of the
_St. Patrick_, the Lascar showed the sailors a tarnished old silver
sword-guard, and one of them bought it of him for a few fish-hooks.
Captain Dillon happened to see it, and asked Martin Bushart where
it had come from. In this strangely accidental way was revealed the
clouded mystery of La Pérouse and his lost frigates. Bushart explained
that when he had first landed on the island the natives possessed as
their chief treasures this ornate sword-guard, the handle of a silver
fork, a few knives, tea-cups, glass beads and bottles, and a spoon
engraved with a crest and monogram. In addition to these furnishings of
a ship’s cabin, they had also some iron bolts, chain-plates, and axes.

Martin Bushart had been curious to discover how these islanders had
obtained such relics of disaster, for the _Hunter_ was the first ship
that had ever been seen off Tucopia when he was set ashore there in
1813. He was informed that a large group of islands called Manicola
lay to leeward about two days’ sail in a canoe, and that voyages
were frequently made there for trade and sociability. It was from
the people of Manicola that the articles of iron and silver had been
obtained. Now, Captain Dillon remembered the story of La Pérouse, as
did every shipmaster who traversed the South Seas, and so he examined
the sword-guard and discovered engraved initials, faint and worn, but
legible enough for him to surmise that they were those of the French
discoverer and navigator.

His interest keen, Captain Dillon went ashore with Martin Bushart, who
interpreted for him, and they held a long conversation with the chiefs
of Tucopia. Many years before, so the tale ran, two great ships had
anchored among the islands of Manicola. Before they were able to send
any boats ashore or to become acquainted with the natives, a very
sudden storm arose, and both ships were driven upon the reefs and were
destroyed by the fury of the surf. The people of Manicola rushed in
crowds to the beach, armed with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows,
and the sailors of the ships fired muskets and big guns at them. This
infuriated the people, who killed some of the shipwrecked men when
they were washed ashore or managed to make a landing in their boats.
The survivors showed a friendly spirit and offered axes, buttons, and
trinkets as gifts, at which the people ceased to attack them.

The foreign sailors saved a large quantity of stores and other material
from the wrecks, and at once began to build a small vessel from the
timbers of the two shattered frigates. They worked with astonishing
skill and speed, and built a schooner that was large enough to carry
most of them away. The commander promised to return and bring off
those whom he was compelled to leave behind. Crowded into this little
makeshift craft, a large number of the officers and men of the lost
_Boussole_ and _L’Astrolabe_ steered away from Manicola and were never
heard of again. A second shipwreck swallowed them somewhere in the
South Seas. It was impossible to ascertain whether La Pérouse himself
was one of this company. Those who were left behind lived with the
people of Manicola and were kindly treated by the chiefs.

The Lascar had made two voyages to Manicola and had actually talked
with two aged Europeans, who told him that they had been wrecked many
years before in a ship, the fragments of which they pointed out to him.
They told him that no other ship had ever stopped there since and that
most of their companions were dead, but that they had been scattered so
widely among the islands of the group that it was impossible to know
whether any more of them were still living. By the Lascar’s reckoning,
this would have been about thirty years after the disaster that
overwhelmed the frigates of La Pérouse and, for all that is known, he
himself may have been one of those aged men who dwelt so long beyond
all knowledge of their countrymen in France and to whom the priceless
gift of rescue was denied.

Captain Dillon was determined to proceed at once to Manicola and find
and save those two aged castaways whom the Lascar believed to be
Frenchmen. Leaving Tucopia, he cracked on sail, and Martin Bushart went
with him, having concluded to return to civilization and much moved
by the friendship which prompted the Irish shipmaster to visit him
after so many years had passed. The Lascar remained behind, having a
large and happy family, which he declined to desert. Within sight of
the Manicola group a dead calm held the good ship _St. Patrick_, and
for seven days not a breath of wind stirred her spires of canvas. She
was running short of provisions, leaking badly, and most reluctantly
Captain Dillon was compelled to resume his voyage to India.

Reaching Calcutta, he presented a carefully written report to officials
of the British Government and stated his conclusion that the remains
of the expedition of La Pérouse were to be found among the islands
of the Manicola group. The story was so credible that the Government
made a ship ready and placed her in command of Captain Dillon, who
got under way in January, 1827. It was September before he arrived at
Tucopia, where he found the Lascar, who, for some reason of his own,
refused to accompany the party to Manicola. Martin Bushart was still
with Captain Dillon, however, and he conducted a thorough investigation
among the people of his own island home in order to discover all the
relics possible. Tucopia was systematically ransacked, and among the
articles brought to light were more swords, bits of iron and copper,
and silverware with the monogram of La Pérouse.

After a fortnight, Captain Dillon took his ship to Manicola, where
the green mountains towered from the sea. 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. It is probable, however, that the
patriarchal chief, speaking at first hand, told the truth when he said
to Captain Dillon:

A long time ago the people of this island, upon coming out one
morning, saw part of a ship on the reef opposite Paiow where it
held together until the middle of the day when it was broken by
the sea and fell to pieces so that large parts of it floated on
shore along the coast. The ship got on the reef in the night when
it blew a tremendous hurricane which broke down great numbers of
our fruit trees. We had not seen the ship there the day before. Of
those saved from her four men were on the beach at this place; whom
we were about to kill, supposing them to be evil spirits, when they
made a present to our chief of something and he saved their lives.

These men lived with us for a short time and then joined the rest
of their own people on the other island of Paiow. None of these
four men was a chief. They were only subordinate men who obeyed
orders. The things which we have brought together to show you were
procured from the ship wrecked on that reef where, at low water,
our people were in the habit of diving and bringing up what they
could find. Several pieces of the wreck floated on shore, from
which we obtained some things; but nothing more has been found for
a long, long time.

We killed none of the ship’s crew at this place, but many dead
bodies were cast up on the beach. On the same night another great
ship struck a reef near another of our islands, Whanou, and went
down. There were many men saved from her, and they built a little
ship, and went away five moons after the big one was wrecked. While
building it, they had a high fence of logs all around them to keep
out the islanders, who were also afraid of them, and therefore
there was not much intercourse between them.

The white men often used to look at the sun through something made
of wood and brass, but they carried it away with them as being
very precious. Two white men remained behind after the rest went
away. These I remember, although there were more, no doubt. One
of them was a chief and the other a common person, who attended
on this other, his master. The white chief died about three years
ago. His servant went away to another island with one of our chiefs
some time before that. The only white men that the people of these
islands have ever seen were those who came ashore from the two
wrecked ships and you who stand before me now.

Obedient to orders, the friendly islanders had assembled for Captain
Dillon’s inspection everything that had been fished up or handed down
to them from the pitiful fragments of La Pérouse’s frigates. There
was much iron and copper, broken chinaware, silver plate stamped with
the lilies of France, a ship’s bell, several brass cannon, and pewter
dishes also bearing the _fleur-de-lis_. On the bronze bell was the
emblem of the holy cross between images of the Saviour and the Virgin
Mary, and so the symbols of religion, of faith, of suffering, and of
consolation had been preserved for those survivors who grew old and
died on these undiscovered islands of the South Seas.

It was evident that the frigates had driven ashore on two different
islands of the group, and Captain Dillon visited the scenes of both
disasters. Native divers explored the reefs and found cannon embedded
in the sand and massive oaken timbers and other memorials which
enabled him to fix the position of the ships. Of the stockade and the
launching-ways upon which the stout-hearted French seamen had built
their little schooner not a trace could be found. During forty years of
luxuriant growth the jungle had obliterated man’s handiwork, and the
logs had rotted into mold.

The extraordinary fact was noted that the survivors who lingered into
old age on these islands had left no written record or message behind
them, not a word to indicate who they were. Lacking paper, they might
have carved upon boards the brief epitome of their story or lettered
it with charcoal on bits of bark, and the kindly chiefs of Manicola
would have guarded the record with care. Like ghosts of sailormen, they
lived in the memories and the traditions of these South Sea Islanders.
Captain Dillon made an interesting discovery while exploring the reefs,
and he thus describes it:

Being in want of water, two men from each boat landed with the
water kegs and went up to the nearest house. On passing it, one
of our people called out in Spanish, “Here is a _fleur-de-lis_,”
which M. Chaigneau and I, who followed and understood him, desired
him to point out. He directed our attention to the door of a house
where we saw at the bottom of the threshold a decayed piece of fir
or pine plank with a _fleur-de-lis_ and other ornamental work upon
it. It had probably formed part of a ship’s stern and when complete
exhibited the national arms of France. It was placed upon edge to
barricade the passage, for the double purpose of keeping the pigs
out and the children in the house. This we bought for a hatchet.

It was in Captain Dillon’s mind that one of the survivors had gone
to another island, according to the old chief’s story, and so after
finishing the investigation of the Manicola group, he sailed to ransack
the seas near by. Nothing came of the search, and the natives whom he
questioned here and there had never seen or heard of other white men
excepting in the legends of the wreck of the two great ships as they
had listened to the tales and songs of visitors from Manicola. Captain
Dillon returned to Calcutta, where his enterprise and success were
highly approved by the British Government of India, which ordered him
to proceed to France with the precious relics of the lost expedition of
La Pérouse.

The Irish merchant skipper found that he had become a distinguished
personage. His Most Christian Majesty, Charles X of France, was pleased
to make him a chevalier of the Legion of Honor, with an annuity of four
thousand francs. Chevalier Dillon relates:

I was now taken to the French court and presented to the king
who received me very graciously and conversed with me upon the
subject of my voyage. He was well acquainted with the history of La
Pérouse’s expedition and addressed several judicious questions to
me respecting the loss of that celebrated navigator, and inquired
what was my opinion as to the probability of any of the crew being
yet alive on the Solomon Islands.

While in Paris I met several times with the Viscount Sesseps who
is the only person of La Pérouse’s expedition now known to be
alive. He was attached to it twenty-six months and was landed at
Kamchatka to convey dispatches and the charts and journals to
France. He is now sixty-five years of age and in good health. He
accompanied me one day to the Ministry of Marine for the purpose
of viewing the relics procured at Manicola which he examined
minutely. The piece of board with the _fleur-de-lis_ on it, he
observed, had most probably once formed a part of the ornamental
work of the _Boussole’s_ stern on which the national arms of France
were represented. The silver sword handle he also examined and
said that such swords were worn by the officers of the expedition.
With regard to the brass guns, having looked at them attentively,
he observed that the four largest were such as stood on the
quarter-deck of both ships, and that the smallest gun was such as
they had mounted in the long-boats when going on shore among the
savages. On noticing a small mill-stone, he turned around suddenly
and expressed his surprise, exclaiming, “That is the best thing you
have got! We had some of them mounted on the quarter-deck to grind
our grain.”

Savants and naval officers weighed all the evidence, and were of the
opinion that at least two of the survivors had been alive as late as
1824, or thirty-six years after the shipwreck, and that one of them
was possibly La Pérouse. The theory was advanced that after his great
adventure had been eclipsed by a misfortune so enormous, he might have
been unwilling to return to France, fancying himself disgraced, and
that he perhaps chose to maroon himself at Manicola when his comrades
sailed away in their tiny schooner. Be that as it may, their fate was
no less tragic, for the sea conquered them and left no sign or token.
Long after Captain Dillon had made his famous voyage of discovery,
the belief still persisted in France that La Pérouse and some of his
officers and men were existing somewhere in the South Seas and awaiting
the rescue that never came.

Soon after Captain Dillon visited Manicola, a French ship arrived there
on a similar mission. Having satisfied himself as to the location of
the wreck of the flag-ship, _L’Astrolabe_, the captain sent his crew
ashore to erect an enduring monument of stone, upon which was carved
the words:

“To the Memory of La Pérouse and his Companions.”

CHAPTER IX

WHEN H. M. S. _PHOENIX_ DROVE ASHORE

Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell
Your manly hearts shall glow,
As ye sweep through the deep,
While the stormy winds do blow!
While the battle rages loud and long
And the stormy winds do blow.

It was a British admiral, Sir Lewis Bayly, who told the officers of
the American destroyers operating out of Queenstown, “To work with
you is a pleasure, to know you is to know the best traits of the
Anglo-Saxon race.” In the same spirit it is generous to recall the
enduring traditions of the English Navy, which were welded through
many centuries of courageous conflict with the sea and the enemy. The
wooden frigates and the towering ships of the line gave place to the
steel-walled cruiser and the grim, squat dreadnought, but for the men
behind the guns the salty lineage was unbroken. As Beatty and his
squadrons kept watch and ward in the misty Orkneys, so had Nelson
maintained his uneasy vigil off Toulon.

Among the annals of the vanished days of the old navies, of the tarry,
pigtailed seamen with hearts of oak, the story of a shipwreck has
been preserved in a letter written to his mother by a lieutenant of
the frigate _Phoenix_ in the year 1780. He tells her about the tragic
episode as though he had actually enjoyed it, scribbling the details
with a boyish gusto which conveys to us, in a manner exceedingly vivid,
how ships and men lived and toiled in the age of boarding-pikes,
hammock-nettings, and single topsails. Few young men write such long
letters to their mothers nowadays, and even in that era of leisurely
and literary correspondence a friend who was permitted to read the
narrative was moved to comment:

“Every circumstance is detailed with feeling and powerful appeals are
continually made to the heart. It must likewise afford considerable
pleasure to observe the devout heart of a seaman frequently bursting
forth and imparting sublimity to the relation.”

This stilted admiration must not frighten the modern reader away, for
Lieutenant Archer held his old-fashioned piety well under control, and
was as brisk, slangy, and engaging a young officer as you could find
afloat in a skittish destroyer of the present day. The forty-four-gun
frigate _Phoenix_ was commanded by Captain Sir Hyde Parker, who later
became an admiral, and under whose orders Nelson served for a time. His
name has a flavor of interest for Americans because he took part in the
British naval attack on New York in 1776 and later joined in harassing
Savannah. With almost no naval strength in the War of the Revolution,
the United States had only its audacious privateers to molest the
enemy’s commerce and was helpless to convoy or protect its merchant
shipping, which was largely destroyed. The British squadron to which
the _Phoenix_ was attached, finding little American booty afloat in
1780, turned its attention to the Spanish foe and cruised in the waters
of the Caribbean.

On August 2d the frigate sailed from Port Royal, Jamaica, escorting
two store-ships to Pensacola, and then loafed about in the Gulf and
off the Cuban coast for six weeks in quest of Spanish prizes. It was
a hot, wretchedly uncomfortable business, this beating about in the
tropics in a ship of a hundred and forty years ago. The bluejackets
were frequently flogged by way of making them fond of the service, and
many of them had been hauled into this kind of maritime slavery by the
brutal press-gangs which raked the English ports. Somehow they managed
to survive the chronic hardships of life at sea and to keep their ardor
bright, so that in a gale of wind or against a hostile fleet they
stubbornly did their duty as long as two planks held together. The
bulldog strain made them heroic.

In the ward-room of the _Phoenix_, where the officers perspired and
grumbled and cursed their luck, they kept an ingenious lottery going to
vary the monotony of an empty sea. Every man put a Spanish dollar into
a canvas bag and set down his guess of the date of sighting a sail.
No two gamblers were to name the same date. Whenever a man lost, he
dropped another dollar into the bag. It was growing heavy, for one week
stretched into another without a gleam of royals or topgallant-sails
from Vera Cruz to Havana. Like a good sportsman, Captain Sir Hyde
Parker paid his stake into the dollar bag and squinted through his long
brass spy-glass as he grumpily trudged the quarterdeck.

It was off Cape San Antonio, at the western end of Cuba, that the man
at the masthead shouted down:

“A sail upon the weather bow.”

“Ha! ha! Mr. Spaniard, I think we have you at last,” jubilantly
exclaimed the captain. “Turn out all hands! Make sail! All hands give
chase!”

A midshipman scrambled aloft and blithely reported:

“A large ship standing athwart us and running right before the wind.”

“Larboard! Keep her away! Set the studding-sails!” was the order, and
two hundred nimble seamen raced to their stations on deck and in the
tops and swarmed out along the yards.

Up from below came the little doctor, rubbing his hands and crying:

“What, ho! I have won the dollar bag!”

“The devil take you and your bag!” roared Lieutenant Archer. “Look
yonder! That will fill all our money-bags.”

“Two more sail on the larboard beam,” came from aloft. “A whole fleet
of twenty sail coming before the wind.”

“Confound the luck of it!” growled the captain of the frigate, “this is
some convoy or other; but we must try to snap up two or three of them.
Haul in the studding-sails. Luff her. Let us see what we can make of
them.”

They were discovered to be twenty-five sail of Spanish merchantmen,
under convoy of three lofty line-of-battle ships, one of which set out
in chase of the agile _Phoenix_, which soon showed her heels. A frigate
had no business to linger too close to the hundred guns of a ponderous
three-decker. The huge Spanish man-of-war lumbered back to the convoy
and herded them watchfully while the British nosed about until dark,
but found no stray prizes that could be cut out from the flock. In the
starlight three ships seemed to be steering a course at some distance
from the Spanish fleet, so the frigate gave chase, and came up with a
heavy vessel mounting twenty-six guns.

“Archer, every man to his quarters,” said the captain. “Light the
battle-lanterns and open the gun-ports. Show this fellow our force, and
it may prevent his firing into us and killing a man or two.”

Across the intervening water rang the challenge from the _Phoenix_:

“Ho, the ship ahoy! Lower your sails and bring to instantly, or I will
sink you.”

Amid the clatter of blocks and creaking of spars the other ship laid
her mainyard aback and hung plunging in the wind while to the sharp
interrogation her skipper bawled through his trumpet:

“This is the British armed merchant ship _Polly_, from Jamaica to New
York. What ship are you?”

“His Majesty’s forty-four gun frigate _Phoenix_,” was the reply, at
which the honest sailors of the merchantman let go three rousing
cheers; but a glum old shell-back of the frigate’s crew was heard to
mutter:

“Oh, damn your huzzas! We took you to be something else.”

The _Polly_ had fallen in with the Spanish fleet that same morning, as
it turned out, and had been chased all day, wherefore the frigate stood
by her until they had run clear of danger. It was the courtesy of the
sea, but Lieutenant Archer was unconsoled and he fretfully jotted down
in writing to his mother:

“There I was, from being worth thousands in imagination, reduced to the
old four and sixpence a day. The little doctor won the most prize money
of us all, for the bag contained between thirty and forty dollars.”

After almost running ashore in a thick night and clawing off by good
seamanship, the _Phoenix_ ran over to Jamaica for fresh water, and then
sailed in company with two other frigates. The verdant mountains of
that lovely island were still visible when the sky became overcast. By
eleven o’clock that night, “it began to snuffle, with a monstrous heavy
appearance from the eastward.” Sir Hyde Parker sent for Lieutenant
Archer, who was his navigating officer, and exclaimed:

“What sort of weather have we? It blows a little and has a very ugly
look. If in any other quarter but this I should say we were going to
have a smart gale of wind.”

“Aye, sir,” replied the lieutenant, “it looks so very often here when
there is no wind at all. However, don’t hoist topsails until it clears
a little.”

Next morning it was dirty weather, blowing hard, with heavy squalls,
and the frigate laboring under close-reefed lower sails.

“I doubt whether it clears,” said the frowning captain. “I was once in
a hurricane in the East Indies, and the beginning of it had much the
same appearance as this. So be sure we have plenty of sea room.”

All day the wind steadily increased in violence, and the frigate,
spray-swept and streaming, rolled in the passage between Jamaica and
Cuba, in peril of foundering if she stayed at sea and of fetching up
on the rocks if she tried to run for shelter. There was nothing to do
but to fight it out. I shall let Lieutenant Archer describe something
of the struggle in his own words, old sea lingo and all, because he
depicts it with a spirit so high-hearted and adventurous, quite as you
would expect it of a true-blue young sailorman.

At eight o’clock a hurricane; the sea roaring but the wind still
steady to a point; did not ship a spoonful of water. However, got
the hatchways all secured, expecting what would be the consequence
should the wind shift; placed the carpenters by the mainmast with
broad-axes, knowing from experience that at the moment you may want
to cut it away to save the ship, an axe may not be found. Went to
supper; bread, cheese, and porter. The purser frightened out of
his wits about his bread bags, the two marine officers as white as
sheets, not understanding the ship’s working and groaning in every
timber, and the noise of the lower deck guns which by this time
made a pretty screeching and straining to people not used to it.
It seemed as if the whole ship’s side was going at each roll. Old
“Wooden-head,” our carpenter, was all this time smoking his pipe
and laughing at the doctor; the second lieutenant upon deck, and
the third in his hammock.

At ten o’clock I thought to get a little sleep; came to look into
my cot; it was full of water, for every seam, by the straining of
the ship had begun to leak and the sea was also flooding through
the closed gun-ports. I stretched myself, therefore, upon the deck
between two chests and left orders to be called, should the least
thing happen. At twelve a midshipman came up to me:

“Mr. Archer, we are just going to wear ship, sir.”

“Oh, very well, I’ll be up directly. What sort of weather have you
got?”

“It blows a hurricane, sir, and I think we shall lose the ship.”

Went upon deck and found Sir Hyde there. Said he:

“It blows damned hard, Archer.”

“It does indeed, sir.”

“I don’t know that I ever remember it blowing so hard before,
Archer, but the ship makes a very good weather of it upon this
tack as she bows the sea; but we must wear her, as the wind has
shifted to the south-east and we are drawing right down upon Cuba.
So do you go forward and have some hands stand by; loose the lee
yard-arm of the foresail and when she is right before the wind,
whip the clew-garnet close up and roll up the sail.”

“Sir, there is no canvas that can stand against this a moment. If
we attempt to loose him he will fly into ribands in an instant, and
we lose three or four of our people. She will wear by manning the
fore shrouds.”

“No, I don’t think she will, Archer.”

“I’ll answer for it, sir. I have seen it tried several times on the
coast of America with success.”

The captain accepted the suggestion, and Archer considered it “a great
condescension from such a man as Sir Hyde.” Two hundred sailors were
ordered to climb into the fore-rigging and flatten themselves against
the shrouds and ratlines where the wind tore at them and almost plucked
them from their desperate station. Thus arranged, their bodies en masse
made a sort of human sail against which the hurricane exerted pressure
enough to swing the bow of the struggling ship, and she very slowly
wore, or changed direction until she stood on the other tack. It was
a feat of seamanship which was later displayed during the historic
hurricane in the harbor of Samoa when British, German, and American
men-of-war were smashed by the tremendous fury of wind and sea, and the
gallant old steam frigates _Vandalia_, _Trenton_, and _Nipsic_ faced
destruction of the Stars and Stripes gallantly streaming and the crews
cheering the luckier British ship that was able to fight its way out to
sea.

The hapless _Phoenix_ endured it tenaciously, but the odds were too
great for her. When she tried to rise and shake her decks free of the
gigantic combers, they smashed her with incessant blows. The stout
sails were flying out of the gaskets that bound them to the yards. The
staunch wooden hull was opening like a basket. The ship was literally
being pounded to pieces. 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.”

“Pooh! pooh!” was the cheery answer, “as long as it is not over your
mouth you are well off. What the devil are you making all this noise
about?”

The unterrified Archer found much water between decks, “but nothing to
be alarmed at,” and he told the watch below to turn to at the pumps,
shouting at them:

“Come pump away, my lads! Will you twiddle your thumbs while she
drowns the lot of you? Carpenters, get the weather chain-pump
rigged.”

“Already, sir.”

“Then man it, and keep both pumps going. The ship is so distressed
that she merely comes up for air now and then. Everything is swept
clean but the quarterdeck.”

Presently one of the pumps choked, and the water gained in the hold,
but soon the bluejackets were swinging at the brakes again, while
Lieutenant Archer stood by and cheered them on. A carpenter’s mate came
running up to him with a face as long as his arm and shouted:

“Oh, sir, the ship has sprung a leak in the gunner’s room.”

“Go, then, and tell the carpenter to come to me, but don’t say a word
about it to any one else.”

When the carpenter came tumbling aft he was told:

“Mr. Goodenow, I am informed there is a leak in the gunner’s room.
Do you go and see what is the matter, but don’t alarm anybody and
come and make your report privately to me.”

“Sir, there is nothing there,” announced the trusty carpenter, a
few minutes later. “’Tis only the water washing up between the
timbers that this booby has taken for a leak.”

“Oh, very well, go up on deck and see if you can keep the water
from washing down below.”

“Sir, I have four people constantly keeping the hatchways secure,
but there is such a weight of water upon the deck that nobody can
stand it when the ship rolls.”

Just then the gunner appeared to add his bit of news.

“I thought some confounded thing was the matter, and ran directly,”
wrote Lieutenant Archer.

“Well, what is the trouble here?”

“The ground tier of powder is spoiled,” lamented the faithful
gunner, “and I want to show you, sir, that it is not because of
any carelessness of mine in stowing it, for no powder in the world
could be better stowed. Now, sir, what am I to do? If you don’t
speak to Sir Hyde in my behalf, he will be angry with me.”

Archer smiled to see how easily the gunner took the grave danger of the
ship and replied:

“Let us shake off this gale of wind first and talk of the damaged
powder later.”

[Illustration: PERILOUS SITUATION OF THE SHIP]

At the end of his watch below, Archer thought that the toiling gangs
at the pumps had gained on the water a little. When he returned to the
deck he was rather appalled by the situation, although his courage
was unshaken. When he later tried to convey a picture of it for the
entertainment of his mother, part of the letter read like this:

If I were to write forever, I could not give you an idea of it--a
total darkness all above; the sea on fire, running as it were in
Alps or Peaks of Teneriffe (mountains are too common an idea); the
wind roaring louder than thunder, the whole made more terrible,
if possible, by a very uncommon kind of blue lightning; the poor
ship very much pressed, yet doing what she could, shaking her sides
and groaning at every stroke. Sir Hyde was lashed upon the deck to
windward and I soon lashed myself alongside of him and told him
the state of affairs below, saying that the ship did not make more
water than might be expected in such infernal weather and that I
was only afraid of a gun breaking loose.

“I am not in the least afraid of that,” said the captain. “I have
commanded her for six years and have had many a gale of wind in
her, so that her iron work, which always gives way first, is pretty
well tried. Hold fast, Archer, that was an ugly sea. We must lower
the yards, for the ship is much pressed.”

“If we attempt it, sir, we shall lose them, for a man aloft can do
nothing; besides, their being down would ease the ship very little;
the mainmast is a sprung mast; I wish it were overboard without
carrying everything with it, but that can soon be done. The gale
cannot last forever. ’Twill soon be daylight now.”

Found by the master’s watch that it was five o’clock, glad it was
so near dawn and looked for it with much anxiety. Cuba, thou are
much in our way! Sent a midshipman to fetch news from the pumps.
The ship was filling with water despite all their labor. The sea
broke halfway up the quarterdeck, filled one of the cutters upon
the booms and tore her all to fragments. The ship lying almost upon
her beam ends and not attempting to right again. Word from below
that the water had gained so fast they could no longer stand to the
pumps. I said to Sir Hyde:

“This is no time, sir, to think of saving the masts. Shall we cut
away?”

“Aye, Archer, as fast as you can.”

I accordingly went into the chains with a pole-axe to cut away the
lanyards; the boatswain went to leeward, and the carpenters stood
by the mast. We were already when a very violent sea broke right on
board of us, carried away everything that was left on deck, filled
the ship with water, the main and mizzen-masts went, the ship
righted but was in the last struggle of sinking under us. As soon
as we could shake our heads above water Sir Hyde exclaimed:

“We are gone at last, Archer,--foundered at sea.”

“Yes, sir. And the Lord have mercy upon us.”

The unlucky crew of the _Phoenix_ frigate, more than three hundred
souls, had behaved with disciplined fortitude. The captain, who had
commanded her for six years, knew his ship and her people, and they had
stood the test. In this weltering chaos of wind and sea, which extended
far over the Caribbean, twelve other ships went down, all of them
flying the white ensign of the Royal Navy, and more than three thousand
seamen perished. Maritime disasters were apt to occur on a tremendous
scale in those olden days when ships sailed in fleets and convoys.

It was not ordained that the brave and dogged ship’s company of the
_Phoenix_ should be entirely swallowed by the sea. While they fought
the last fight for life in the broken, sinking hulk, the keel thumped
and ground along the back of a reef. Lieutenant Archer and Captain Sir
Hyde Parker were floundering about together and had given themselves
up for lost. The lieutenant was filled with reflections profoundly
religious, as well as with salt water, and he took pains to expound
them at length in writing to his mother, and these were a great solace,
no doubt, to the good woman who waited for infrequent tidings in a home
of green England. Sir Hyde Parker was swearing and spluttering at his
men who were crying, “Lord have mercy on us!”

“Keep to the quarter-deck, my boys, when she goes to pieces,” he
yelled. “’Tis your best chance.”

The shattered remnants of the frigate were being flailed upon the Cuban
reef, but the boatswain and the carpenter rallied volunteers who cut
away the foremast, which dragged five men to their death when it fell.
All this was in the black, bewildering darkness just before the stormy
day began to break; but the crew held on until they were able to see
the cruel ledges and the mountainous coast which was only a few hundred
feet away. Lieutenant Archer was ready to undertake the perilous task
of trying to swim ashore with a line, but after he had kicked off his
coat and shoes he said to himself:

This won’t do, for me to be the first man out of the ship, and the
senior lieutenant at that. We may get to England again and people
may think I paid a great deal of attention to myself and not much
to anybody else. No, that won’t do; instead of being the first,
I’ll see every man, sick and well, out of her before me.

Two sailors managed to fetch the shore, and a hawser was rigged by
means of which all of the survivors succeeded in reaching the beach.
True to his word, Archer was the last man to quit the wreck. Sir Hyde
Parker was a man of more emotion than one might infer, and the scene is
appealing as the lieutenant describes it.

The captain came to me, and taking me by the hand was so affected
that he was scarcely able to speak. “Archer, I am happy beyond
expression, to see you on shore but look at our poor _Phoenix_.” I
turned about but could not say a single word; my mind had been too
intensely occupied before; but everything now rushed upon me at
once, so that I could not contain myself, and I indulged for a full
quarter of an hour in tears.

The resourceful bluejackets first entrenched themselves and saved
what arms they could find in the ship, for this was no friendly and
hospitable coast. They were on Spanish soil, and it was not their
desire to be marched off to the dungeons of Havana as prisoners of
war. Tents and huts were speedily contrived, provisions rafted from
the wreck, fires built, fish caught, and the camp was a going concern
in two or three days. Archer proposed that the handy carpenters mend
one of the boats and that he pick a crew to sail to Jamaica and find
rescue. This was promptly done and he says:

In two days she was ready and I embarked with four volunteers and a
fortnight’s provisions, hoisted English colors as we put off from
the shore and received three cheers from the lads left behind,
having not the least doubt that, with God’s assistance, we should
come and bring them all off. Had a very squally night and a very
leaky boat so as to keep two buckets constantly baling. Steered
her myself the whole night by the stars and in the morning saw the
coast of Jamaica distant twelve leagues. At eight in the evening
arrived at Montego Bay.

This dashing lieutenant was not one to let the grass grow under his
feet, and he sent a messenger to the British admiral, another to the
man-of-war, _Porcupine_, and hustled off to find vessels on his own
account. All the frigates of the station were at sea, but Archer
commandeered three fishing craft and a little trading brig and put
to sea with his squadron. Four days after he had left his shipwrecked
comrades he was back again, and they hoisted him upon their shoulders
and so lugged him up to Sir Hyde Parker’s tent as the hero of the
occasion. The _Porcupine_ arrived a little later, so there was plenty
of help for the marooned British tars. Two hundred and fifty of them
were carried to Jamaica. Of the others “some had died of the wounds
they received in getting on shore, some of drinking rum, and a few had
straggled off into the country.”

Lieutenant Archer was officially commended for the part he had played,
and was promoted to command the frigate _Tobago_ after a few months of
duty on the admiral’s staff. You will like to hear, I am sure, how he
wound up the long letter home which contained the story of the last
cruise of the _Phoenix_.

I must now begin to leave off, else my letter will lose its
passage, which I should not like, after being ten days at different
times writing it, beating up with a convoy to the northward,
which is a reason that this epistle will never read well, for I
never sat down with a proper disposition to go on with it. But
as I knew something of the kind would please you, I was resolved
to finish it; yet it will not bear an overhaul, so don’t expose
your son’s nonsense. You must promise that should any one see it
beside yourself, they must put this construction on it--that it was
originally intended for the eyes of a mother only--as upon that
supposition my feelings may be tolerated. You will also meet with
a number of sea terms which if you do not understand, why, I cannot
help you, as I am unable to give a sea description in any other
words. I remain His Majesty’s most true and faithful servant and my
dear mother’s most dutiful son.

CHAPTER X

THE ROARING DAYS OF PIRACY

In Bristowe I left Poll ashore,
Well stocked wi’ togs an’ gold,
And off I goes to sea for more,
A piratin’ so bold.
An’ wounded in the arm I got,
An’ then a pretty blow;
Come home to find Poll’s flowed away,
Yo, ho, with the rum below!

It was in the early part of the eighteenth century, two hundred
years ago, when the merchant voyager ran as great a risk of being
taken by pirates as he did of suffering shipwreck. Within a brief
period flourished most of the picturesque scoundrels who have some
claim to distinction. Blackbeard terrified the Atlantic coast from
Boston to Charleston until a cutlass cut him down in 1717. He was a
most satisfactory figure of a theatrical pirate, always strutting in
the center of the stage, and many others who came later were mere
imitations. Robert Louis Stevenson was able to imagine nothing better
than Blackbeard’s true sea-journal, written with his own wicked hand,
which contained such fascinating entries as this:

Such a day, rum all out;--our company somewhat sober;--a
damned confusion amongst us! Rogues a-plotting--great talk of
separation--so I look sharp for a prize. Took one with a great deal
of liquor on board;--so kept the company drunk, damned drunk, then
all things went well again.

Captain Avery was plundering the treasure-laden galleons of the Great
Mogul off the coast of Madagascar in 1718, and was reported to have
stolen a daughter of that magnificent potentate as his bride, while
“his adventures were the subject of general conversation in Europe.”
The flamboyant career of Captain Bartholomew Roberts began in 1719,
that “tall, dark man” whose favorite toast was “Damnation to him who
lives to wear a halter,” and who always wore in action a rich crimson
damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his hat, a gold chain
and diamond cross around his neck, a sword in his hand, and two pairs
of pistols hanging at the ends of a silk sling flung over his shoulder.

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. When her crew presumed to argue with her, she pistoled them
with her own fair hand, and neatly killed in a duel a rash gentleman
pirate who had been foolish enough to threaten her lover. When asked
why she preferred a vocation so hazardous, Mary Read replied that “as
to hanging, she thought it no great hardship, for were it not for that
every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so infest the seas and men
of courage would starve.”

It was in the same period that the bold Captain John Quelch of
Marblehead stretched hemp, with five of his comrades, and a Salem poet
was inspired to write:

Ye pirates who against God’s laws did fight,
Have all been taken which is very right.
Some of them were old and others young
And on the flats of Boston they were hung.

In 1724 two notorious sea-rovers, Nutt and Phillip, were cruising
off Cape Ann within sight of Salem harbor’s mouth. They took a sloop
commanded by one Andrew Harraden, and thereby caught a Tartar. Harraden
and his sailors erupted from the hold into which they had been flung,
killed Nutt and Phillip and their officers, tossed the rest of the
rascals down below, and sailed into Boston Harbor, where their cargo
of pirates speedily furnished another entertainment for the populace
that trooped to the row of gibbets on the flats of the town. 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.

The experience of an unlucky master mariner in that era of the
best-known and most successful pirates may serve to convey a
realization of the gamble with fortune which overshadowed every trading
voyage when the perils of the deep were so cruel and so manifold.
And it is easy to comprehend why the bills of lading included this
petition, “And so God send the good sloop to her desired port in
safety. Amen.”

In the year of 1718 the _Bird_ galley sailed from England in command
of Captain Snelgrave to find a cargo of slaves on the coast of Sierra
Leone. The galley, as sailors then used the term, was a small,
square-rigged vessel not unlike a brig, although properly the name
belonged to craft propelled by oars as well as sails; but seamen in all
ages have had a confusing habit of mixing the various classifications
of vessels. It was nothing against the character of Captain Snelgrave
that he was bound out to the Gold Coast in the rum and nigger trade.
The ship-chandlers of Liverpool made special displays in their windows
of handcuffs, leg-shackles, iron collars, short and long chains, and
furnaces and copper kettles designed for slave-ships. The English
Missionary Society owned a plantation and worked it with slaves. In
America the New England colonies took the lead in the slave-trade,
and the enterprising lads of the coastwise ports sought berths in the
forecastles of the African traders because of the chance of profit
and promotion. It was not held to the discredit of John Paul Jones
that he learned seamanship before the mast in the slaver _King George_
before he hoisted the first naval ensign of the United States above the
quarter-deck of an American man-of-war.

No sooner had the _Bird_ galley dropped anchor in the river of Sierra
Leone than three pirate ships came bowling in with a fair breeze. They
had been operating together and had already captured ten English
vessels. Captain Snelgrave eyed these unpleasant visitors with
suspicion, but hoped they might be on the same errand as himself. At
eight o’clock in the evening, however, he heard the measured thump of
oars and descried the shadow of an approaching boat. The first mate
was ordered to muster and arm twenty men on deck in readiness to repel
boarders. The second mate hailed the boat and was answered; “The ship
_Two Friends_ of Barbadoes, Captain Elliott.” This failed to satisfy
the master of the _Bird_ galley, and he shouted to the boat to sheer
off and keep clear.

A volley of musket-balls was the reply from the boat, and the first
mate of the _Bird_ was told to return the fire. His men stood idle,
however, and it transpired that he cherished secret ambitions of
being a pirate himself and had won over several of the crew. This was
extremely embarrassing for Captain Snelgrave, who was compelled to
witness the marauders scramble unresisted up the side of his vessel.
The leader of the pirates was in a particularly nasty temper because
the mate had been ordered to open fire, and he poked a pistol into the
captain’s face and pulled trigger. As quick as he was courageous, the
skipper knocked the weapon aside, and was promptly felled with the butt
of it. Dodging along the deck, the pirate boatswain swung at him with
a broadsword and missed his mark, the blade biting deep into the oaken
rail.

There was a grain of spunk left in the crew of the _Bird_, and they
rushed upon the evil boatswain before he could kill the captain. For
this behavior they were mercilessly slashed with cutlasses, kicked
and cursed, and then trussed in a row. With a touch of ferocious
whimsicality the pirate chief declared that he would let Captain
Snelgrave be tried by his own crew. If they had any complaints to make
of him as a shipmaster, he would be swung to a yard, and they should
haul the rope. He must have been a just and humane man, for not a
sailor voiced a grudge, and the ruffians appeared to forget all about
murder. After firing volleys to let their ships know that a prize had
been captured, they turned with tremendous enthusiasm to the business
of guzzling and feasting.

The captive sailors were released, and told to dress all the hens,
ducks, and geese that were in the coops on deck; but no sooner were
the heads chopped off than these childish blackguards refused to have
supper delayed. The _Bird_ carried a huge furnace, or oven, contrived
for cooking the food of the five hundred slaves which were expected
aboard. Into a roaring fire the pirates flung the hens, ducks, and
geese, feathers and all, and hauled them out as soon as they were
singed and scorched. The same culinary method was employed for half a
dozen Westphalia hams and a sow with a dozen little pigs. A few finicky
pirates commanded the ship’s cook, under pain of death, to boil the
meat in the great copper caldrons designed for the slaves’ porridge.

The prodigious banquet made these unmannerly guests feel in better
humor, and they even told their surgeon to dress the wounds of the
_Bird’s_ sailors. They amused themselves by playing foot-ball with
Captain Snelgrave’s excellent gold watch, and drank themselves into a
state of boisterous joviality. The old record puts it mildly, to say
the least, in affirming that “the captain’s situation was by no means
an agreeable one, even under these circumstances, as ferocious men are
generally capricious. He now fared very hard, enduring great fatigue
with patience, and submitting resignedly to the Almighty will.”

Before the wild night ended he was taken aboard the pirates’ flagship,
where he was questioned by a sort of commodore or commander-in-chief
of the squadron. His name was Cocklyn, and he had ambitions to conduct
operations on a scale even larger. He wanted to win over the _Bird’s_
crew and to fly his black pennant from her, as his talk disclosed, and
this was why the lives of her company had been spared. Now occurred
one of those romantic incidents which the novelist would hesitate to
invent as stretching the probabilities, but in these ancient narratives
of the sea things were set down as they actually happened. This is how
the story was written in 1724:

Soon after the captain was on board the pirate ship, a tall man,
well armed, came up to him and told him his name was Jack Griffin,
one of his old school-fellows. Upon Captain Snelgrave appearing not
to recollect him, he mentioned many pranks of their youth together.
He said he was forced into the pirate service while chief mate
of a British vessel and was later compelled to act as master of
one of the pirate ships. His crew he described as most atrocious
miscreants. This Jack Griffin, a bold and ready man, promised to
watch over the captain’s safety, as the pirates would soon be worse
intoxicated with the liquors on board their prize.

Griffin now obtained a bowl of punch and led the way to the
cabin, where a carpet was spread to sit upon, as the pirate ship
was always kept clear for action. They sat down cross-legged,
and Cocklyn, the chief captain, drank Snelgrave’s health, saying
his crew had spoken well of him. A hammock was slung for Captain
Snelgrave at night, by the intercession of Griffin, but the pirates
lay rough, as they styled it, because their vessel, as already
observed, was always cleared for action.

Griffin, true to his promise of guarding his old school-fellow
while asleep, kept near the captain’s hammock, sword in hand, to
protect him from insults. Towards morning, while the pirates were
carousing on deck, the boatswain came toward the hammock in a
state of intoxication, swearing that he would slice the captain for
ordering the crew to fire, dragged him from his hammock, and would,
no doubt, have executed his savage threat if it had not been for
Griffin who, as the boatswain pressed forward to stab the sleeping
Captain Snelgrave, cut at the fellow with his sword and after a
sharp struggle succeeded in beating him off. At length the wretches
fell asleep and the captain was no longer molested. Griffin next
day complained of the boatswain’s conduct and he was threatened
with a whipping. However, Captain Snelgrave wisely pleaded for him,
by saying he was in liquor.

Shielded from harm by this lawless, but devoted, old school-mate of
his, the master of the _Bird_ galley was in no great danger of being
sliced by some impulsive pirate who was careless with a cutlass. His
perfidious first mate and ten of the sailors now signed on as pirates
and assisted the others in ransacking Captain Snelgrave’s unfortunate
ship. Such merchandise as did not happen to please their fancy was
pitched overboard, and they saved little more than the provisions, the
clothing, and the gold coin. They were like a gang of hoodlums on a
lark, and wanton destruction was their very stupid idea of a pastime.
This wild carnival went on for several days. Barrels of claret and
brandy were hoisted on deck, the heads knocked in, and the drink baled
out with cans and buckets until the roisterers could hold not another
swallow. Then they doused one another with buckets of claret and good
French brandy as they ran roaring around the deck.

Bottled liquors were opened by whacking off the necks with cutlasses.
They pelted one another with cheeses, and emptied the tubs of butter
to slide in. One of these sportive pirates dressed himself in the
captain’s shore-going black suit and his best hat and wig, strutted
among his comrades until they drenched him with claret, and then
chucked the wardrobe overboard. You will be gratified to learn that
“this man, named Kennedy, ended his career in Execution Dock.”

Of the two other pirate ships then in the river of Sierra Leone one
was British and the other French. The English commander was one of
the brave and resourceful sea-rogues of his era, a fighting seaman
in whom survived the spirit of those desperate adventurers of the
seventeenth century who followed Morgan to Panama and hunted the
stately Spanish galleons with Hawkins and Dampier in the waters of the
Pacific. This was the famous Captain Davis, who would sooner storm
a fort or take a town at the head of a landing party than to loot a
helpless merchantman. He had attempted to combine forces with these
other pirates at Sierra Leone and had been formally elected admiral in
a council of war. But he found reason to suspect the good faith of his
associates, whereupon he summoned them into his cabin and told them to
their faces:

“Hear ye, you Cocklyn and La Boise” (the French captain), I find
that by strengthening you I have put a rod into your hands to whip
myself, but I am able to deal with you both. However, since we met
in love let us part in love, for I find that three of a trade can
never agree long together.

Captain Davis was getting ready for a cruise on his own account,
with the design of attacking the garrison of one of the Portuguese
settlements on the African coast, but he found time to interest himself
in the affairs of poor Captain Snelgrave of the _Bird_ galley. It may
have been a spark of genuine manliness and sportsmanship, or dislike
of the slippery Cocklyn, but at any rate Captain Davis interceded in
his own high-handed manner and told the rascals to give the plundered
_Bird_ back to her master and to treat him decently.

This altered the situation. Captain Davis was the king wolf of the
pack, and his bite was much worse than his bark. Cocklyn and La Boise
were disposed to resent this interference and hung back a little, at
which the black flag was run up to the masthead of Captain Davis’s
formidable ship, and the gun-ports were dropped with a clatter to show
a crew, disciplined and sober, with matches lighted, and handspikes
and tackles ready.

Very promptly the _Bird_ galley was restored to Captain Snelgrave,
but before going to sea Captain Davis was rowed ashore for a farewell
chat with a friend of his named Glynn. This man was living at Sierra
Leone for reasons unknown, probably in trade of some kind, and the
only information concerning him is that “although he had suffered
from pirates, he was on good terms with them and yet kept his hands
free from their guilt.” He must have been a two-fisted person with a
backbone of steel, for Captain Davis was satisfied to intrust to his
care the broken fortunes of the master of the _Bird_ galley.

Soon after the tall ship of Captain Davis was wafted seaward with
the breeze that drew off the land, the pirates twain, Cocklyn and La
Boise, were invited to dinner at the house of Captain Glynn. The other
guest was Captain Snelgrave, who discovered that the wind had suddenly
shifted in his favor and he was treated with the most distinguished
cordiality and respect. Fresh clothing was offered him, and he enjoyed
the luxury of one of Captain Glynn’s clean shirts. It was explained
that the _Bird_ was uncommonly well adapted for fitting out as a pirate
ship because she had flush decks for mounting guns and was sharply
molded for fast sailing. Cocklyn and La Boise politely suggested
that they keep her for their own use and give to Captain Snelgrave a
merchant vessel of larger tonnage which had been recently captured. By
way of making amends for their rudeness, they would be delighted to
replace his ruined cargo with merchandise taken from other prizes, and
he could take his pick of the stuff.

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.

Next day the abandoned merchantman which had been offered to Captain
Snelgrave was towed alongside the _Bird_ galley, and all of his cargo
that had escaped destruction was transferred by his own crew. There was
a good deal of it, after all, for it had consisted largely of salted
provisions and bolts of cloth for the slave market, and the wanton
pirates had tired of the game before they got into the lower holds.
Captain Snelgrave moved ashore and found a comfortable refuge in the
house of Captain Glynn.

Retribution now overtook that truculent pirate, the boatswain, who had
first attempted to blow out the brains of Captain Snelgrave and then to
slice him in his hammock. He fell very ill of tropical fever and rum,
and realizing that he had come to the end of his cable, he sent for the
skipper and implored forgiveness. It is solemnly recorded that “this
man fell into a delirium the same night and died before the morning,
cursing God his maker in such a frightful manner that it affected
several of the pirates who were yet novices in that mode of life, and
they came privately, in consequence, to obtain Captain Snelgrave’s
advice how they should get out of their evil course. A proclamation of
pardon had been issued to all pirates who surrendered before July 1,
1719, and the captain advised them to embrace the pardon so tendered.”

Still refusing to accept the gift of a purloined ship, the captain
persuaded the pirates to remove all his cargo ashore, which they
cheerfully did and built a shelter to cover it. Then they busied
themselves at the task of arming the _Bird_ for their own wicked use,
and were amazingly sober and industrious for as much as a fortnight.
When they were ready to put the ship into commission, Captain Snelgrave
was invited aboard to a jollification in his own cabin. There was a
certain etiquette to be followed, it seemed, and the observance was
punctilious. Toasts were drunk to a lucky cruise, and every man smashed
his glass upon the table or floor. The ship was renamed the _Windham
Galley_, and they all trooped out on deck and waved their hats and
huzzaed when the Jolly Roger broke out of stops and showed aloft like a
sinister blot against the clean sky from the mast which had displayed
the British ensign. The new batteries were fired in salute, with a
great noise and clouds of gunpowder smoke, and then, of course, all
hands proceeded to get most earnestly drunk though they laid no violent
hands upon Captain Snelgrave.

The ships were still in the harbor when the redoubtable Captain Davis
came sailing in from his voyage. It had been shorter than expected, for
rich booty was overtaken at sea, and he delayed the adventure with the
Portuguese fort until he could dispose of his profits and refit. First,
he had laid alongside two English and one Scotch ship and lifted out of
them such goods as attracted his fancy, permitting them to proceed. A
few days later the lookout aloft sighted a sail and, in the words of
the record, “it may be proper to inform our readers that, according to
the laws of pirates, the man who first discovers a sail is entitled to
the best pair of pistols in the ship and such is the honor attached to
these that a pair of them has been known to sell for thirty pounds.”

Captain Davis chased this tempting ship until she drove ashore and the
terrified crew took to the jungle. She proved to be a gorgeous prize, a
heavily armed packet, “having on board the Governor of Acra, with all
his substance, going to Holland. There was in her money to the amount
of fifteen thousand pounds, besides a large quantity of merchant goods
and other valuable articles.” This ship had the men and guns to have
stood up to it and given Captain Davis a battle royal, but the sight of
his evil flag, and perhaps his own bloody repute, made cowards of them.
It was quite otherwise with another Dutchman overhauled soon after
this. These stolid seamen had the proverbial tenacity of their race,
and they scorned the notion of hauling down colors at the sight of a
scurvy pirate. To the insolent summons they replied with a broadside
and killed nine surprised pirates, who were smelling brimstone in
another world before they realized how it happened.

Excessively annoyed, Captain Davis closed in, and soon found that he
had a hard nut to crack. With thirty guns and ninety men the Dutchman
stood him off, and they fought a stubbornly heroic sea action that
lasted from one o’clock at noon until after daylight next morning,
occasionally hauling off for rest and repairs and tackling each other
again, hammer and tongs. Finally the Dutchman had to strike, for he was
outfought by men better drilled and practised. Captain Davis respected
their valor, and there was no mention of making them walk the plank.
The fifty survivors were taken aboard his own ship to save their lives,
for their own ship was so smashed and splintered that she sank soon
after.

Reaching Sierra Leone, Captain Davis invited Captain Snelgrave aboard
for supper in order to learn how affairs had been going with him. At
the end of a successful cruise, the cutthroats had to be handled with
a loose rein. They expected a grand carouse as a matter of course,
and such a leader as Captain Davis was wise enough to close his eyes
until he was ready to put the screws on again and prepare for another
adventure. Most of the ship’s company were properly drunk when the
alarm of fire was shouted. A lighted lantern had been overturned among
the rum-casks, and the flames were running into the hold. Amid the
shouting and confusion, the sober men tumbled into boats and pulled for
the shore. The fire was eating straight toward the magazine, in which
were stowed thirty thousand pounds of gunpowder.

One pirate, who was both astonishingly brave and sober, dropped through
a hatchway, groped through the smoke, and yelled that unless they
fetched him blankets and buckets of water the ship would blow up.
Captain Snelgrave gathered all the rugs and blankets he could find and
rushed below to join the fellow. Other men rallied when led by Captain
Davis, and formed a bucket brigade to douse the blankets and stuff them
against the bulkhead of the magazine. It was a ticklish situation,
taking it by and large,

for the night was dark, the crew drunk, and no hope of mastering
the fire seemed to remain. To spring into the water was certain
death, from the sharks hovering around the vessel. Having
accomplished all that he was able, Captain Snelgrave snatched up a
quarter-boat grating and lowered it with a rope, hoping to float
away upon that, as several persons had gone off with the boats.
While the captain was thus meditating his escape he heard a shout
from the main-deck, “_Now for a brave blast to go to hell with._”
On which some of the newly entered pirates near him, believing the
ship must blow up in a few minutes, lamented their entering on that
vile course of life, with bitter exclamations against the hardened
offenders on the main-deck who dared to blaspheme in such an hour
as this.

Fifty of the crew crawled out upon the bowsprit and sprit-sail yard,
where they clung and hoped to be blown clear of the general upheaval.
They handsomely deserved extermination, but a dozen gallant volunteers
still toiled and suffered in the hold, and at length they smothered the
fire before it ate into the magazine. All of them were terribly burned,
and it is fair to assume that Captain Davis awarded them an extra share
of the plunder when it was distributed. One of the heroes of the crisis
was Captain Snelgrave, or so the pirates admiringly agreed, and they
were more than ever anxious to befriend him. They would have been glad
to serve under him, but he had no taste for piracy and declined the
honor when a vote was passed around the tubs of grog that he go as a
sailing master until he had gained experience and was ready to command
a crew of gentlemen of fortune.

Disappointed in this, they used their gold to buy back for him a
considerable amount of his cargo, which had been divided or sold
ashore, and presented him with some of the merchandise allotted to
them from the ships lately captured by Captain Davis. There were worse
pirates on the high seas than this collection of gallows-birds in the
harbor of Sierra Leone, and merchant mariners much less admirable than
this London slave-trader, Captain Snelgrave. Thanks to the exertions
of the solicitous pirates, he gathered together sufficient possessions
to retrieve the voyage from complete disaster, and the stuff was saved
from harm in the rough warehouse ashore, where the kindly Captain Glynn
was a vigilant guardian.

The pirates were now ready to depart on their disreputable business,
Cocklyn and La Boise sailing in company, while Captain Davis ranged off
alone. This time he carried out his purpose of raiding the Portuguese
colony, the military governor of which received warning from a coasting
vessel and accordingly strengthened his defenses and armed every
able-bodied man. Captain Davis led his pirates from their boats and
stormed the fort under a heavy fire.

The Portuguese governor was a fighting man himself and he gave as good
as he took. The pirates gained the parapet and set the wooden buildings
afire with hand grenades, but while the issue wavered, Captain Davis
fell, a pistol-ball in his stomach. In a hand-to-hand conflict his
pirates were driven back to the beach, carrying their dying captain
with them. Defeated, they left their dead and wounded and fled in
the boats, while in the last gasp Captain Davis discharged both his
pistols at the enemy. “And those on board the ship, who expected to
hoist in treasure, had to receive naught but their wounded comrades and
dead commander.”

Captain Snelgrave, left free to work out his own plans, loaded his
cargo into one of the vessels which the pirates had abandoned in the
river. He was shrewd enough to know that he could not be accused of
receiving a stolen ship, for maritime usage now protected him. He was
taking possession of a derelict and sailing her home, where he could
make terms of sale or salvage with her rightful owners. And so he
mustered as many of his crew as had not been lured away by the pirates,
and said good-by to his loyal friend Captain Glynn, and took on board
six other masters of ships who were stranded at Sierra Leone because
they had been unlucky enough to fall in with Cocklyn and La Boise and
Captain Davis. On August 1, in the year 1719, Captain Snelgrave dropped
anchor in the port of Bristol and trudged ashore to find a pleasant
haven in a tavern and tell his troubles to other sun-browned skippers
who knew the Guinea coast and the hazards of the slave-trade.

A different kind of fortune was that of Captain George Roberts, who
sailed from Virginia for the Guinea coast in the year of 1721. Pirates
overtook his sloop off the Cape Verd Islands, and at first treated him
rather good-humoredly, as he was a man of spirit and could hold his
own when the bottle was passed. The pirate captain took a fancy to him
and had a mind to let him resume his voyage, but unluckily the health
of the “Old Pretender,” James III, was proposed at table, and Captain
Roberts, who was no Jacobite, roundly refused to drink such a damnable
toast. He did not purpose to bend his sentiments to suit the fancy of
any pirates that ever sailed unhung. One of them was for shooting him
through the head, but to the others it seemed more entertaining to put
him aboard his own vessel without provisions, water, or sails, and to
kidnap his crew as well, and let him drift out to sea. Captain Roberts
listened to the discussion and had nothing more to say. He would drink
the health of a king of his own choosing if it cost him his skin, and
that was the end of it.

The old chronicler who preserved the tale of this stubborn sea-dog took
occasion to moralize in this fashion:

That men of the most abandoned characters should so far forget what
humanity is due their fellow men, as to expose any one to almost
certain destruction, merely on account of a foolish toast, may
excite the astonishment of the reflecting; nor perhaps shall we
wonder much less at the romantic resolution of Captain Roberts who
braved death rather than submit to an insignificant form.

In the dead of night the sloop was cast off, and the pirates even
pilfered all the candles to make matters as uncomfortable as possible.
Two boys of the sloop’s crew had been left on board, one of them an
infant of eight years, and it may have accorded with the piratical
style of humor to call this a complement. The eight-year-old urchin was
perhaps a cabin-boy; no other information is vouchsafed concerning him.
At any rate, he must have turned to like a little man, for he took the
wheel while the captain and the elder boy pumped to clear the leaky
vessel of water. Fairly confident that she would stay afloat, they took
stock at daylight, and found that the pirates had overlooked a few
crumbs of bread, ten gallons of rum, a little rice, and some flour,
with a two-gallon jug of water. They were unable to kindle a fire
because the jocular pirates had carried off the flint and steel, and so
they lived on raw flour and rice and drank rum after the water gave out.

Three days’ hard labor sufficed to patch up a sail that pulled the
sloop along when the wind blew hard enough. Rain fell and gave them
a little more water before they died of thirst. A shark was caught
when the food had all been eaten and they lived for three weeks before
sighting land again. This was the Isle of St. Anthony, in the Cape Verd
group, and the elder boy begged to be allowed to go ashore in the boat
and look for water.

He pulled away after sunset and, with the anchor down, Captain Roberts
dragged himself into the cabin and was instantly asleep. Rousing out
at midnight, there was no sign of the boat and, to his dismay, he
discovered that the sloop had drifted almost out of sight of land with
a strong night wind. His crew now consisted of the eight-year-old mite
of a sailor lad, but they swung on the pump together and tugged at
the windlass until the anchor was hove short. They tended the rag of
sail, and a kindly breeze slowly wafted them back toward the island
until they were able to drop the mud-hook in a sandy bay with a good
holding-ground. Captain Roberts was a stalwart man, and hats off to his
eight-year-old crew!

The other boy who had rowed ashore was anxiously looking for the
vessel, and he appeared aboard with a gang of negroes whom he had hired
to work her into the nearest port. They brought food and water with
them, and affairs seemed to have taken an auspicious turn, but during
the first night out the sail split from top to bottom. There was no
other canvas to set, and the negroes promptly tumbled into the boat
and made for the island. The voyage appealed to their simple intellects
as very much of a failure. Captain Roberts sighed, and resumed the
interminable task of finding a haven for his helpless sloop. His two
boys did what they could, but they were completely worn out and unable
to help rig up another sail of bits of awning, tarpaulins, and so on,
and bend it to the spars.

Captain Roberts was inclined to believe that he had played his last
card, but one is quite unable to fancy him as regretting his quixotic
refusal to join a party of Jacobite pirates in toasting the Pretender.
When another day came, he was grimly hanging to the tiller and trying
to keep the sloop’s head in the direction of land when he heard a
commotion in the hold. One of the lads plucked up courage to peer over
the hatch-coaming, and in the gloom he descried three negroes in a
very bad temper who were holding their heads in their hands. Ordered
on deck, they anxiously rolled their eyes, and explained that they had
found the puncheon of rum soon after coming on board and had guzzled it
so earnestly that they sneaked below to sleep it off. Their comrades
had deserted the ship in the darkness, and Captain Roberts, assuming
that all hands were quitting him, had not counted them.

Here was a crew provided by a sort of unholy miracle, and they were
ready to help take the ship to port to save their own perfectly
worthless lives. They managed to carry her close to a harbor called
St. John’s, and one of the black rascals declared that he was an able
pilot; but when the vessel drew close to the rocks he lost his courage
and dived overboard, whereupon his comrades followed him, and all swam
ashore like fishes. The afflicted Captain Roberts let go his anchor
and waited through the night, after which other natives came off to
the sloop and brought fresh provisions and water. It seemed as if
their troubles might be nearing an end, but a storm blew next day, and
the sloop went upon the rocks. Captain Roberts and the two lads were
rescued by the kindly natives, who swam out through the raging surf,
but the sloop was soon dashed to pieces. She deserved to win a happier
fortune.

The voyage to the Guinea coast was ruined, and Captain Roberts had no
money to back another venture; but he set about building a boat from
the wreck of his sloop, and made such a success of it that with the
two lads and three negro sailors he was soon doing a brisk trade from
island to island. Having accumulated some cash, he decided to return to
London, where he arrived after an absence of four years.

CHAPTER XI

THE LOSS OF THE _WAGER_ MAN-OF-WAR

To the modern generation, one of the great adventures of seafaring
history is familiar only in an eloquent reference of Robert Louis
Stevenson, and few readers, I venture to say, have taken the trouble to
delve for the facts which inspired the following tribute in the essay
called “The English Admirals”:

It was by a hazard that we learned the conduct of the four marines
of the _Wager_. There was no room for these brave fellows in the
boat, and they were left behind upon the island to a certain death.
They were soldiers, they said, and knew well enough it was their
business to die; and as their comrades pulled away, they stood upon
the beach, gave three cheers, and cried, “God bless the king!”
Now one or two of those who were in the boat escaped, against all
likelihood, to tell the story. That was a great thing for us; but
surely it cannot, by any possible twisting of human speech, be
construed into anything great for the marines.

You may suppose, if you like, that they died hoping their
behavior would not be forgotten; or you may suppose they thought
nothing of the subject, which is much more likely. What can be
the signification of the word “fame” to a private of marines,
who cannot read and knows nothing of past history beyond the
reminiscences of his grandmother? But whatever supposition you
make, the fact is unchanged; and I suppose their bones were already
white, before the winds and the waves and the humor of Indian
chiefs and governers had decided whether they were to be unknown
and useless martyrs or honored heroes. Indeed, I believe this is
the lesson: if it is for fame that men do brave actions, they are
only silly fellows after all.... If the marines of the _Wager_ gave
three cheers and cried “God bless the king,” it was because they
liked to do things nobly for their own satisfaction. They were
giving their lives, there was no help for that, and they made it a
point of self-respect to give them handsomely.

In 1739 the bitter rivalry between England and Spain for the trade
and treasure of the New World flamed afresh in war. A squadron of six
British men-of-war under Commodore George Anson was sent out to double
Cape Horn and vex the dons in their South American ports and on the
routes of the Pacific where the lumbering galleons steered for Panama
or Manila. With these fighting-vessels went a supply-ship called the
_Wager_, an old East Indiaman which had been armed and filled with
stores of every description. Clumsy, rotten, and overladen, the _Wager_
was no better off for a crew, which consisted of sailors long exiled
on other voyages and pining for home. The military guard was made up
of worn-out old pensioners from Chelsea Hospital, who were very low
in their minds at the prospect of so long and hazardous a cruise.
They could not be called a dashing lot aboard the _Wager_, and as for
the captain of her his name was Cheap, and he was not much better
than that. You shall have the pleasure of damning him as heartily for
yourselves as did his forlorn ship’s company.

The crazy old hooker of a store-ship began to go to pieces as soon as
she encountered the wild gales and swollen seas off the Horn. Decks
were swept, boats smashed, and the mizzenmast carried clean out of her.
Disabled and leaking, the _Wager_ was somehow worked into the Pacific;
but the captain had no charts of the coast, and he blundered along
in the hope of finding the rest of the squadron at the rendezvous,
which was the island of Juan Fernandez. He was warned by the first
lieutenant, the gunner, and other officers that the floating weed, the
flocks of land birds, and the longitude, as they had figured it out,
indicated a lee shore not many miles distant. The gunner was a man of
sorts and he was bold enough to protest:

“Sir, the ship is a perfect wreck; our mizzenmast gone, and all our
people ill or exhausted; there are only twelve fit for duty,--therefore
it may be dangerous to fall in with the land.”

Captain Cheap stubbornly held on until he was disabled by a fall on
deck which dislocated his shoulder, and confined him to his cabin. The
officers were better off without him. On the morning of May 13, 1740,
the carpenter’s keen eyesight discerned the lift of land through a rift
in the cloudy weather, but the others disagreed with him until they saw
a gloomy peak of the Cordilleras. The ship was driving bodily toward
the land, and the utmost exertions were made to crowd her offshore; but
the sails split in the heavy gale, and so few men were fit for duty
that there were no more than three or four active seamen to a watch.

In darkness next morning the _Wager_ struck a sunken rock, and her
ancient timbers collapsed. She split open like a pumpkin, rolled on her
beam-ends, and lodged against other projections of the reef, with the
seas boiling clean over her. Then a mountainous billow or two lifted
her clear, and she went reeling inshore, sinking as she ran. Several
of the sick men were drowned in their hammocks, and others scrambled
on deck to display miraculous recoveries. Because the commander of the
ship was worthless and disabled besides, the discipline of the ship
in this crisis was abominable. The brave men rallied together as by
instinct, and tried to hammer courage and obedience into the frenzied
mob. The mate, Mr. Jones, was a man with his two feet under him, and
he shouted to the cowards:

“Here, lads, let us not be discouraged. Did you never see a ship
amongst breakers before? Come, lend a hand; here is a sheet and there
is a brace; lay hold. I doubt not that we can bring her near enough to
land to save our lives.”

Mr. Jones thought they were all dead men without a ghost of a show of
salvation, as he later confessed, but his exhortations put heart into
them, and he was not one to die without a gallant struggle. 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 suffering Captain Cheap permitted
himself to be lifted out of bed and borne into a boat with most of the
commissioned officers, while the master, gunner, and carpenter, who
were not gentlemen at all, but very ordinary persons, in fact, remained
in the wreck to save what they could of her and to round up the
riotous bluejackets and bear a hand with the surviving invalids.

A hundred and forty people of the _Wager_ found themselves alive,
and nothing more, on the savage and desolate coast of Patagonia. The
boatswain, who was a hard case, had stuck by the ship, but there was
nothing noble in his motive. He led a crowd of kindred spirits, who
vowed they would stay there as long as the liquor held out. When
ordered to abandon the hulk, they threatened mutiny and broached
another cask. During the following night, however, another gale drove
the sea over the wreck, and the rogues had quite enough of it.

They signaled for the boats to take them off, but this was impossible
because of the raging surf; wherefore the gay mutineers lost their
tempers and let a cannon-ball whizz from a quarter-deck gun at the
refugees on shore. While waiting for rescue, they rifled the cabins for
tempting plunder, and swaggered in the officers’ laced coats and cocked
hats. The boatswain, who egged them on, saw to it that they were well
armed, for he proclaimed defiance of all authority, and there was to be
no more of the iron-handed code of sea law. These were pressed men, poor
devils, who broke all restraint because they had not been wisely and
humanely handled.

When at length they were taken ashore, Captain Cheap showed one of his
fitful flashes of resolution by sallying from his tent and knocking
the insolent boatswain down with a loaded cane and putting a cocked
pistol to his ear. This took the wind out of the sails of the other
mutineers, and they tamely submitted to being stripped of their arms,
which made them harmless for the moment. So bleak was the coast that
the only food obtainable was shell-fish, while from the wreck almost no
stores were saved. The most urgent business was to knock huts together
of the drift-wood and canvas, and effect some sort of organization.
A fortnight passed before Captain Cheap had the provisions properly
guarded and the rations dealt out in a systematic manner, while in the
meantime the sailors were stealing the stuff right and left, and the
battle was to the strongest.

It was ascertained that they were marooned on what appeared to be an
island near the coast and about three hundred miles to the northward
of the Strait of Magellan. Three canoes of Patagonian Indians happened
to discover the camp, and they were friendly enough to barter for two
dogs and three sheep, which were no more than a meal for the hungry
crew of the _Wager_. The Indians vanished, and the agony of famine took
hold of these miserable people. Instead of pluckily working together
to master the situation like true British seamen, they split into
hostile factions, and insubordination was rampant. There were rough
and desperate men among them, it is true, but a leader of courage
and resource whom they respected would have stamped out much of this
disorder.

They wandered off in sullen groups, ten of them straying away into
the woods until starvation drove them back, another party building a
punt and sailing away in it, never to be heard of again. These latter
fellows were not regretted, according to the narrative of one of the
survivors, who declares that

there was great reason to believe that James Mitchell, one of them,
had perpetrated no less than two murders, the first on a sailor
found strangled on board and the second on the body of a man who
was discovered among some bushes, stabbed in a shocking manner. On
the day of their desertion, they plotted blowing up the captain
in his hut, along with the surgeon and Lieutenant Hamilton of the
marines; they were with difficulty dissuaded from it by one less
wicked than the rest; and half a barrel of powder, together with
the train, were found actually laid.

Among the officers was a boyish midshipman named Cozens who was of a
flighty, impulsive disposition and who had no head for strong liquors.
Too much grog made him boisterous, and by way of a lesson he was shut
up in a hut under guard. He cherished a hearty dislike for Captain
Cheap and was extremely impertinent to that chicken-hearted bully of a
commander, who thereupon lashed him with his cane. The doughty sentry
of marines interfered, swearing that not even the captain of the ship
should strike a prisoner placed in his charge. The midshipman took
the disgrace to heart, and what with anger, drink, and privation he
seems to have become a bit unbalanced. There had been no more popular
young officer in the _Wager_, easy, genial, affectionate; but now he
quarreled with the surgeon and had a more serious row with the purser,
taking a shot at him and vowing that he was ready to mutiny to get rid
of the blockheads and villains who had brought ruin to the expedition.

Captain Cheap heard a report of the uprising of Midshipman Cozens and
delayed not to investigate, but rushed out and shot the rash youngster
through the head. There was nothing novel in talking mutiny. The
whole camp was infected with lawlessness. If it was a crime to ignore
authority, all hands were guilty. Flouted and held in contempt, Captain
Cheap killed the midshipman as an example to the others, and, of
course, they hated and despised him more than before. Poor young Cozens
lived long enough to take the hand of his chum, Midshipman Byron, and
to smile a farewell to the sailors who had been fond of him. They
begged to be allowed to carry him to one of their own tents while he
was still breathing, but the captain refused, and flourished his pistol
at them; so he died where he fell.

Captain Cheap, after the deed was done, addressed the people,
assembled together by his command, and told them he was resolved to
retain his authority over them as usual, and that it remained as
much in force as ever. He then ordered them all to return to their
respective tents, with which they complied. This event, however,
contributed to lessen him in the regard of the people.

Three boats had been saved from the wreck of the _Wager_, and the
largest of them was the long-boat, a word that awakens memories of
many an old-time romance of the sea and seems particularly to belong
to “Robinson Crusoe.” It was what might be called a ship’s launch, and
was often so heavy and capacious that vessels towed it astern on long
voyages. Two months after the disaster, the _Wager’s_ people despairing
of rescue, began to patch up the boats with the idea of making their
way to the Spanish settlements of the mainland. The long-boat was
hauled up on the beach, and the carpenter undertook the difficult task
of sawing it in two and building in a section in order to make it
twelve feet longer.

While this enterprise was under way, a party of fifty Indians, men,
women, and children, found the camp and built wigwams, evidently
intending to settle for a while and do some trading. Their canoes were
filled with seal, shell-fish, and live sheep, and the visitation was
immensely valuable to the castaways; but some of the ruffianly sailors
insulted the women, and the indignant Patagonians soon packed up and
departed, bag and baggage. As a result, the ravages of famine became so
severe that the muster-roll was reduced to a hundred men. This meant
that a third of the survivors of the wreck were already dead.

Throughout the whole story of suffering, mutiny, and demoralization the
deeds of those who bravely and unflinchingly endured seemed to gleam
like stars against a somber background. You will find frequent mention
of Midshipman Byron, a lad in his teens, who was the real hero of the
_Wager_, although he never realized it. He achieved nothing spectacular
in a way, but he always tried to do his duty and something more. The
British midshipman of that era was often a mere rosy-cheeked infant who
pranced into the thick of a boarding-party with his cutlass and dirk
or bullied a boat’s crew of old salts in some desperate adventure on
an enemy’s coast. The precocious breed survives in the Royal Navy of
to-day, and in the great battleships of the Grand Fleet, at Rosyth or
Scapa Flow, you might have seen these bantam midshipmen standing a deck
watch with all the dignity of a four-starred admiral.

Midshipman Byron of the _Wager_ built himself a tiny hut in which
he lived alone after the captain killed his messmate Cozens, and
his companion was a strayed Indian cur, which adored him. The dog
faithfully guarded the hut when Byron was absent from it, and they
shared together such food as could be found, mostly mussels and
limpets. At length a deputation of seamen called to announce that they
must eat the dog or starve. Byron made a gallant fight to save his
four-legged friend, but was subdued by force, and for once during the
long and terrible experience he wept and was in a hopeless state of
mind.

Among the minor characters who commend themselves to our approval was
a reckless devil of a boatswain’s mate, who noticed that the seabirds
roosted and nested on reefs and islets out to seaward. In the words of
one of his shipmates:

Having got a water puncheon, he scuttled it, then lashing two logs,
one on each side of it, he went to sea in this extraordinary and
original piece of embarkation. Thus he would frequently provide
himself with wild-fowl when all the rest were starving; and the
weather was bad indeed when it deterred him from adventuring.
Sometimes he would be absent a whole day. At last he was
unfortunately overset by a heavy sea when at a great distance from
shore; but being near a rock, though no swimmer, he contrived to
scramble to it. There he remained two days with little prospect
of relief, as he was too far off the land to be visible. Luckily,
however, one of the boats happened to go that way in quest of
wild-fowl, discovered his signals, and rescued him from his forlorn
condition. Yet he was so little discouraged by this accident that,
soon after, he procured an ox’s hide from the Indians and, by the
assistance of hoops, fashioned something like a canoe in which he
made several successful voyages.

In August the three boats had been made seaworthy enough to undertake
an escape from the miseries of this hopeless island. Then, as usual,
there arose confusion of purpose and violent disagreement. This ship’s
company could be trusted to start a row at the drop of the hat. As
long as there was breath in them, they were sure to turn against one
another. The majority proposed that they try for a passage homeward by
way of the Strait of Magellan. Captain Cheap and his partizans were
for steering northward, capturing a Spanish vessel of some sort, and
endeavoring to find the British squadron from which the _Wager_ had
become separated. He blustered about his authority, insisted that his
word was law, and so on, until the high-handed majority grew tired of
his noise and decided to take him along as a prisoner and hand him
over to justice for killing Midshipman Cozens.

They hauled their commander out of bed and lugged him by the head
and the heels to the purser’s tent, where he was guarded by a sentry
of marines and very coarsely derided by these unmannerly rebels. The
gunner informed Captain Cheap that he was to be carried to England as
a prisoner; at which he retorted, with proper spirit, that he would
sooner be shot than undergo such humiliation and, given his choice, he
preferred to be left behind on the island. This was agreeable to the
mob, who gave three cheers and thought no more about him. His two loyal
companions, the surgeon and Lieutenant Hamilton, elected of their own
free will to remain with the fallen commander, and this devotion was
one of the admirable episodes of the tragedy. The mutineers recognized
it as such, and they distributed the provisions fairly with these
exiles and gave them arms and ammunition.

[Illustration: THE “CHARLEMAGNE,” A NEW YORK PACKET SHIP

From the painting by Frederic Roux of Havre, 1838]

There were now eighty-one men to embark in the long-boat, the cutter,
and the barge and set sail for the Strait of Magellan. They started
off with huzzas and Ho for Merry England, with about one chance in a
thousand of getting there, and coasted along for two days when the wind
blew some of their rotten canvas away and they halted to send the
barge back to the wreck for more sail-cloth. 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. Order was restored
to the extent that a sailor was flogged and banished for stealing
food, and the party sensibly toiled at the wreck until they salvaged
several barrels of salt beef from the hold, and so recruited health and
strength. They patched together the remnants of the yawl, and in this
and the barge they put to sea to cruise to the northward in December,
or more than half a year after the loss of the _Wager_. Misfortune
beset them at every turn. It seemed as though their ship had been under
a curse. A gale almost swamped the two boats as soon as they were clear
of the island, and to keep afloat they had to throw overboard all their
salt beef and seal meat. Most of the other stuff was washed out, and
they made a landing in worse plight than before.

With fitful weather they skirted a swampy coast, with nothing to eat
but seaweed, until they were chewing the shoes they had sewed together
from raw sealskin. It was Christmas day or thereabouts when the yawl
was smashed beyond mending by dragging its anchor and driving into
the surf. The barge was not large enough to carry all hands, and it
was agreed that four of them should be abandoned ashore. There was no
obstreperous argument over it. They had become careless of such matters
as life and death. Just how these four men were chosen or whether they
volunteered is left to conjecture. The story written by Midshipman
Byron, which is the most detailed account of the episode, describes it
as follows:

They were all marines, who seemed to have no great objection to the
determination made with regard to them, they were so exceedingly
disheartened and exhausted with the distress and dangers they had
already undergone. Indeed, I believe it would have been a matter of
indifference to most of the others whether they should embark or
take their chance. The captain distributed among these poor fellows
arms, ammunition, and some other necessaries.

When we parted they stood upon the beach, giving us three cheers
and calling out, “_God bless the King!_” We saw them a little
after setting out upon their forlorn hope and helping one another
over hideous tracts of rocks; but considering the difficulties
attending this only mode of travelling left them, for the woods
are impenetrable, from their thickness, and the deep swamps
everywhere met within them, and considering, too, that the coast is
here rendered inhospitable by the heavy seas that are constantly
tumbling upon it, it is probable that they all experienced a
miserable fate.

The picture of the four marines as they waved their caps and shouted
that immortal huzza is apt to suggest the wreck of the _Birkenhead_
troop-ship in 1852, when she struck a rock off the Cape of Good
Hope and four hundred British soldiers and marines perished. With
the ship foundering beneath their feet, they fell in and stood as
though on parade, while the women and children were put into the two
available boats. As the decks of the _Birkenhead_ lurched under the
sea, the ranks of the four hundred British soldiers and marines were
still splendid and unbroken. The deed rang through England like a
trumpet-call, as well it might.

Brothers in arms and kinsmen in spirit were these four hundred men
of England’s thin, red line to the four humble privates of the Royal
Marines whose names are forgotten. And Kipling’s tribute may be said to
include them also:

To take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all
about,
Is nothing so bad when you’ve cover to ’and, an’ leave an’ likin’
to shout;
But to stand an’ be still to the _Birken’ead_ drill is a damn
tough billet to chew,
An’ they done it, the Jollies--’Er Majesty’s Jollies--soldier an’
sailor too.

The wretched voyage of the _Wager’s_ barge was so delayed by head winds
and battering seas and the necessity of landing often in search of food
that all hope of reaching a Spanish port was relinquished, and finally
they put about and trailed wearily back to the island and the wreck of
the _Wager_ after two months of futile endeavor. The superstition of
the sea perturbed these childish sailormen, who laid their distresses
to the fact that one of the crew who was murdered on the island had
never been given burial. Therefore the first errand when they tottered
ashore at their old camp was to dig a grave and say a prayer.

They were so tormented with famine that they talked, or rather
whispered, of choosing one of their number by lot, that dreadful old
expedient, and boiling him for a square meal; but the discovery of
some rotten beef cast up from the wreck averted this procedure. They
existed for a fortnight, and then a party of Indians appeared, among
them a chief. He spoke a little Spanish, and an officer of the _Wager_
managed to convey to him that they desired guidance to the nearest
white settlement. The promise of the barge as a gift persuaded the
mercenary Patagonian to lead them out of the wilderness. Thirteen
survivors were left of the twenty who had attempted to fare to the
northward. The four marines had been left to their heroic fate, and
three others had later died of hunger.

The Indian chief had not bound himself to furnish food, and it soon
appeared as though the castaways would all perish to a man before they
came to the end of the journey. They were trying to pull the barge up
a turbulent river with a rapid current, and there occurred an incident
or two which illumined the characters of Midshipman Byron and Captain
Cheap and showed what very different men they were. I quote the old
record:

Mr. Byron had hitherto steered the boat; but one of the men
dropping down, and dying of fatigue, he was obliged to take his
oar. While thus engaged, John Bosman, who was considered the
stoutest man among them, fell from his seat under the thwarts,
complaining that his strength was quite exhausted from want of food
and that he should soon expire. While he lay in this manner, he
would, every now and then, break out into the most pathetic wishes
for some little sustenance, expressing that two or three mouthfuls
might be the means of saving his life.

At this time, the captain had a large piece of boiled seal by
him and was the only one in possession of anything like a meal.
But they were become so hardened to the sufferings of others and
so much familiarized to similar scenes of misery that the poor
man’s dying entreaties were in vain. Mr. Byron sat next him when
he dropped, and having about five or six dried shell-fish in his
pocket, put one from time to time in his mouth, which only served
to prolong his misery. From this, however, death released him soon
after his benefactor’s little supply was exhausted. For him, and
the other man, a grave was made in the sand.

It would have greatly redounded to the tenderness and humanity of
Captain Cheap if he had remitted somewhat of that attention which
he testified to self-preservation and spared in those exigencies
what might have been wanted, consistently with his own necessities.
He had better opportunities of recruiting his stock than the
others, for his rank was an inducement to the Indian guide to
supply him when not a bit of anything could be found for the rest.
On the evening of the same day, Captain Cheap produced a large
piece of boiled seal, of which he permitted no one, excepting
the surgeon, to partake. His fellow-sufferers did not expect it,
as they had a few small mussels and herbs to eat, but the men
could not suppress the greatest indignation at his neglect of the
deceased, saying that he deserved to be deserted for such savage
conduct.

If one may hazard a personal conjecture, it seems plausible to assume
that Captain Cheap was the Jonah of the _Wager_ expedition and that
the spell might have been lifted if he had been thrown overboard much
earlier in the adventure. Be that as it may, the curse was still
potent, for as the next mishap six sailors and one of the Indians
stole the barge and made off to sea with it. This left the others
stranded and bereft of everything that belonged to them. Besides this
affliction, the Patagonian chief was disgruntled because the barge was
to have been his reward for befriending them. He was for killing them
at once as the easiest way to settle the account, but it was Midshipman
Byron, of course, who cajoled him out of his mood and pleased him with
the gift of a fowling-piece. The six seamen who stole the barge passed
into oblivion at the same time, and so were justly punished for their
perfidy. They joined the great majority of the _Wager’s_ company who
never saw port again.

Over the rocks and through the swamps panted and staggered the few
survivors, hauling and paddling canoes like galley-slaves and abused
immoderately by their Indian guides, or captors. They were cold and
wet and famished, and at last the surgeon died, and the others were
little more than shadows. Captain Cheap grew more selfish and pompous,
and adversity had no power to chasten him. One more picture and we are
almost done with him.

The canoes were taken to pieces and each man and Indian woman of
the party, except Captain Cheap, had something to carry. Mr. Byron
had a piece of wet heavy canvas to carry for the captain, in which
was wrapped a piece of seal which had that morning been given to
him by some of the Indians. The way was through a thick wood and
quagmire, often taking them up to the knees, and stumps of trees
in the water obstructing their progress. Their feet were wounded,
besides, with the ruggedness of the ground. Mr. Byron, whose load
was equal to what a strong healthy man might have carried, was left
behind by two Indians who accompanied him. Alarmed lest the whole
should be too far advanced for him to overtake them, he strove to
get up; and in his exertions fell off a tree crossing the road in a
deep swamp, where he narrowly escaped drowning.

Quite exhausted with the labor of extricating himself, he sat
down under a tree and there gave way to melancholy reflections.
Sensible that if he indulged them in inactivity, his companions
could not be overtaken, he marked a great tree and, depositing his
burden, hastened after them. In some hours he came up, and Captain
Cheap began asking for his canvas; and on being told the disaster
that had befallen Mr. Byron, nothing was heard but grumbling for
the loss. Mr. Byron made no answer but, resting himself a little,
rose and returned at least five miles to the burden, with which
he returned just as the others were embarking to cross a great
lake which seemed to wash the foot of the Cordilleras. He was left
behind to wait the arrival of some more Indians, without a morsel
of food, or even a part of the seal meat that had cost him so much
anxiety.

When they were led at last to a small Spanish garrison called Castro,
only four of the party had survived the journey, Midshipman Byron,
Lieutenant Hamilton of the Royal Marines, Lieutenant Alexander
Campbell, and Captain Cheap. Although the English were enemies, the
_corregidor_ and the Jesuit priests felt pity for these poor victims,
and treated them with great kindness. When they had recovered, they
were escorted to the larger town of Chaco with a guard of thirty
Spanish soldiers. At this seaport of the Chilean coast the governor
entertained them handsomely and invited them to travel on his annual
tour through the districts of his province. Midshipman Byron was so
popular with the ladies that he had to steer a very careful course to
avoid entanglements. He was the guest of one doting mother who had two
very handsome daughters, and she straightway sent a message to the
governor asking that the young Englishman be sent back to spend a month
with the family.

This was not so serious as the affair with the niece of the rich and
venerable priest, a highly educated damsel

whose person was good, though she was not a regular beauty. Casting
an amorous eye on Mr. Byron, she first proposed to her uncle to
convert him and then begged his consent to marry him. The old man’s
affection for his niece induced his ready acquiescence to her
wishes, and on the next visit Mr. Byron was acquainted with the
lady’s designs. The uncle unlocked many chests and boxes before
him, first showing what a number of fine clothes his niece had
and then exhibiting his own wardrobe which he said should be Mr.
Byron’s at his death. Among other things he produced a piece of
linen, engaging that it should immediately be made up into shirts
for his use. Mr. Byron felt this last article a great temptation,
yet he had the resolution to withstand it, and declined the honor
intended him, with the best excuses he was able to frame.

Some time after they had been at Chaco, a ship arrived from Lima
which occasioned great joy amongst the inhabitants, as no ship had
been there the year before on account of the alarm of Commodore
Anson’s squadron. The captain of her was an old man, well known
upon the island, who had been trading there for thirty years
past. He had a remarkably large head and was commonly known by
the nick-name of _Cabuco de Toro_, or Bull’s-head. Not a week had
elapsed after his arrival before he came to the governor with a
melancholy countenance, saying that he had not slept a wink since
he came into the harbor because the governor was pleased to allow
three English prisoners to walk about at liberty, whom he expected
every minute would board his vessel and carry her away, although
he said he had more than thirty sailors on board. The governor
answered that he would be responsible for the behavior of the
three Englishmen, but could not help laughing at the old man.
Notwithstanding these assurances, Captain Bull’s-head used the
utmost despatch in disposing of his cargo and put to sea again, not
considering himself safe until he lost sight of Chaco.

The officers of the _Wager_ were compelled to wait for another of
the infrequent trading ships from Lima, and it was therefore in
January, 1743, before they made the next stage of their interminable
pilgrimage. They were sent ashore at Valparaiso, where the Spanish
governor promptly threw them into prison; but he later forwarded them
to Santiago, the capital of Chile, where they were handsomely released
on parole.

In Santiago at that time were Admiral Pizarro and several officers of
the squadron which had been sent out from Spain to intercept Commodore
Anson and drive him away from the rich trade routes of the Pacific. It
was a powerful force of six men-of-war, with a total of three hundred
guns and four thousand sailors, marines, and soldiers. The storms of
Cape Horn and the ravages of disease crippled the expedition, and
shipwreck almost wiped it out. The flagship _Asia_ found refuge in
the River Plate with half her crew dead; the _Esperanza_ had only
fifty-eight men alive of the four hundred and fifty who had sailed
from Spain in her, and of an entire regiment of infantry all but sixty
perished. Only two ships survived to return home after four years’
absence, and more than three thousand Spanish sailors had found their
graves in the sea.

While his flagship was undergoing repairs at Montevideo, Admiral
Pizarro made the journey by land across the Andes to Santiago to
confer with the Viceroy of Chile. Introduced to the officers of the
_Wager_, one of the ships of the enemy’s squadron which he had hoped
to engage in battle, the Spanish admiral invited them to dine with him
and displayed the most perfect courtesy. One of his staff, Don Manuel
de Guiros, insisted upon advancing them funds to the amount of two
thousand dollars. Midshipman Byron and his companions accepted part
of it, giving drafts on Lisbon, and were able to live comfortably and
await the next turn of fortune’s wheel.

Two weary years they tarried in Santiago, and were treated not
as enemies but as castaways. They found great consolation in the
friendship of a Scotch physician who was known as Don Patrico Gedd.
Midshipman Byron wrote:

This gentleman had been a long time in the city and was greatly
esteemed by the Spaniards, as well for his abilities in his
profession as for the humanity of his disposition. He no sooner
heard that four English prisoners had arrived in that country than
he waited on the president and begged that they might be lodged
in his house. This was granted, and had we been his own brothers
we could not have met with a more friendly reception; and during
two years that we were with him, it was his constant study to
make everything as agreeable to us as possible. We were greatly
distressed to think of the expense he was at upon our account, but
it was vain to argue with him about it.

A French ship, bound from Lima to Spain, finally carried them homeward
as passengers, and they saw the shores of England in November, 1745,
or more than five years after the _Wager_ had been lost in the Gulf de
Panas on the coast of Patagonia. The boyish midshipman who had behaved
so well through all vicissitudes was of gentle blood and breeding, and
in England he was known as the Honorable John Byron, second son of the
fourth Lord Byron. When he landed at Dover with two of his shipmates
his troubles were not quite at an end, and to quote his own words:

We directly set off for Canterbury upon post-horses, but Captain
Cheap was so tired by the time he got there that he could proceed
no farther that night. The next morning he still found himself
so much fatigued that he could ride no longer; therefore it was
agreed that he and Mr. Hamilton should take a post-chaise and that
I should ride. But here an unlucky difficulty was started; for upon
sharing the little money we had, it was found to be not sufficient
to pay the charges to London, and my proportion fell so short that
it was, by calculation, bare enough to pay for horses, without a
farthing for eating a morsel upon the road or even for the very
turnpikes. Thus I was obliged to defraud by riding as hard as I
could through the toll-gates, not paying the least regard to the
men who called out to stop me. The want of refreshment I bore as
well as I could.

When I got to the Borough of London I took a coach and drove to
Marlborough Street where my friends lived when I left England but
when I came there I found the place shut up. Having been absent so
many years, and having, in all that time, never a word from home,
I knew not who was dead or who was living or where to go next,
or even how to pay the coachman. I recollected a linen-draper’s
shop, not far from thence, at which our family used to deal. I
therefore drove thither and, making myself known, they paid the
coachman. I then inquired after our family and was told that my
sister had married Lord Carlisle and was at that time in Soho
Square. I immediately walked to the house and knocked at the door.
But the porter, not liking my figure which was half French and half
Spanish, with the addition of a large pair of boots covered with
dirt, was going to shut the door in my face but I prevailed upon
him to let me in.

I need not acquaint the reader with what surprise and joy my sister
received me. She immediately furnished me with money to appear like
the rest of my countrymen. Till that time I could not properly be
said to have finished all the extraordinary scenes in which I had
been involved by a series of adventures, for the space of five
years and upwards.

The Honorable John Byron became a British vice-admiral and was also
the grandfather of the poet, who transmuted some of the exploits of
the midshipman of the _Wager_ into the pages of _Don Juan_. As one of
the most famous fighting sailors of his era, Admiral Byron earned the
nickname of “Foul Weather Jack,” because he contended so constantly
with gales and head winds, and it is to this that Lord Byron refers in
his “Epistles to Augusta”:

A strange doom is thy father’s son’s, and past
Recalling as it lies beyond redress,
Reversed for him our grandsire’s fate of yore,
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

You will find that Stevenson mentions him in that same tribute to the
English admirals:

Most men of high destinies have high-sounding names. Pymn and
Habakkuk may do pretty well, but they must not think to cope with
the Cromwells and Isaiahs. And you could not find a better case in
point than that of the English Admirals. Drake and Rooke and Hawke
are picked names for men of execution. Frobisher, Rodney, Boscawen,
Foul-Weather Jack Byron, are all good to catch the eye in a page of
naval history.

CHAPTER XII

THE CRUISE OF THE _WAGER’S_ LONG-BOAT

The story of the man-of-war _Wager_ was by no means finished when young
Midshipman Byron rode into London and was welcomed as one risen from
the dead. It will be recalled that about twenty of the crew persisted
in the attempt to sail homeward by way of the Strait of Magellan. They
had been at sea only a few days when the cutter, the smaller of their
two boats, was knocked to pieces among the rocks, and the survivors
were therefore jammed into the long-boat, which had room for no more
than half of them. How they managed to stay afloat is a mystery that
cannot be fathomed, with the gunwales only a few inches above water
and scarcely any space to row or steer or handle sail. They quarreled
continually, and “hardly ten testified any anxiety about the welfare of
the voyage but rather seemed ripe for mutiny and destruction.” Eleven
of the company soon preferred to quit this madhouse of a boat and to
face a less turbulent death ashore, and at their own request they were
landed on the coast of Patagonia.

The long-boat, still overcrowded to a degree that meant incredible
discomfort and danger, blundered on her course, with only the sun and
stars for guidance. A little flour and some other stores had been
taken from the wreck, and now occurred a curious manifestation of
human selfishness, of the struggle for survival reduced to the lowest
terms. The officers had endeavored to ration the food, share and share
alike, but the ugly temper of the men made such prudent precautions
impossible, and some obtained more provisions than others. The
situation was described by one of them in these words:

The people on board began to barter their allowance of provisions
for other articles. Flour was valued at twelve shillings a pound,
but, before night, it rose to a guinea. Some were now absolutely
starving for want--and the day following, George Bateman, a lad
of sixteen, expired, being reduced to a perfect skeleton. On the
19th, Thomas Capell, aged twelve years, son of the late Lieutenant
Capell, died of want. A person on board had above twenty guineas of
his money, along with a watch and a silver cup. The latter the boy
wished to sell for flour; but his guardian told him it would buy
clothes for him in the Brazils.

“Sir,” cried the miserable youth, “I shall never live to see the
Brazils, I am now starving--almost starved to death; therefore give
me my silver cup, for God’s sake, to get me some victuals, or buy
some for me yourself.”

But all his prayers and entreaties were vain, and Heaven sent death
to his relief. Those who have not experienced such hardships will
wonder how people can be so inhuman as to witness their fellow
creatures starving before their faces without affording them
succor, but hunger is void of all compassion.

They actually sailed through the Strait of Magellan and reached the
Atlantic after two months of suffering during which twenty men died of
famine and disease. Landing wherever possible, they found seal and fish
or traded with wandering Indians for dogs and wild geese to eat. Of the
survivors no more than fifteen were able to stand or to crawl about
the boat. A happier fate was granted them when they coasted along the
wilderness of the Argentine and found thousands of wild horses, which
kept them plentifully supplied with meat. At length they came to the
Rio Grande and the town of Montevideo, and thirty of them were alive,
or half the number that had made the voyage in the long-boat.

Among those who died almost within sight of rescue was Thomas MacLean,
the cook, a patriarch of eighty-two years, presumably one of those
soldier pensioners who had been snatched from his well-earned repose
at Chelsea Hospital. This is one of the most extraordinary facts of
the whole story, that this tough old veteran of a red-coat, his age
past four score, should have lived all those months, during which the
great majority of the younger officers and men of the _Wager_ had been
blotted out by privations which seemed beyond human endurance.

While the long-boat was standing along the coast, on this last stretch
of the journey, there came a time when there was no food or water left.
There was no small boat to send ashore, so nine of the strongest men
offered to swim to the beach and see what they could find. Over they
went, feeble as they were, and all reached shore except one marine, who
had so little strength to spare that he sank like a stone. Those in
the long-boat let several empty water-casks drift to the land and tied
to them some muskets and ammunition wrapped in tarred canvas. A gale
blew the long-boat out to sea and disabled her rudder. Tacking back
with great difficulty, she found it impossible to lay to and bring off
the eight men, and another cask was floated off to them, containing a
letter of farewell, and more ammunition, and the boat made sail, and
vanished to the northward.

The adventures of this little band of seamen, accidentally marooned in
this manner, were most remarkable. They are almost unknown to history,
although a century and more ago much was written about the _Wager_. The
heroism and manliness of this group of actors go far to redeem many
other episodes of the disaster which were profoundly shameful, and they
are the chief reason for recalling the cruise of the long-boat. Said
Isaac Morris, one of them:

We found ourselves on a wild, desolate part of the world, fatigued,
sickly, and destitute of provisions. However, we had arms and
ammunition and while these lasted we made a tolerable shift for a
livelihood. The nearest inhabited place of which we knew was Buenos
Ayres, about three hundred miles to the northwest: but we were
then miserably reduced by our tedious passage through the Straits
of Magellan, and in a poor condition to undertake so hazardous
a journey. Nothing remained but to commit ourselves to kind
Providence, and make the best of the melancholy situation until our
health became recruited.

We were eight in number thus abandoned by our comrades, for
whose preservation we had risked our lives by swimming ashore
for provisions, and our names Guy Broadwater, Samuel Cooper,
Benjamin Smith, John Duck, Joseph Clinch, John Andrews, John
Allen, and myself. After deliberating on our unhappy circumstances
and comforting each other with imaginary hopes, we came to the
resolution of taking up our quarters on the beach where we landed
until becoming strong enough to undergo the fatigue of a journey to
Buenos Ayres.

There was no senseless chatter about mutiny, no selfish bickering.
They were sturdily resolved to stick together and make the best of a
bad bargain. For a month they lived in a burrow in the sand, knocking
a seal on the head whenever they needed food. As preparation for the
journey they made knapsacks of sealskin, filled them with the dried
flesh, and used the bladders for water bottles. Muskets on their
shoulders, they trudged for sixty miles, when no more fresh water could
be found, and they retreated to their camp to await the rainy season.
Now they built a sort of hut under the lee of a cliff and varied the
diet of seal by catching armadillos and stewing them in seaweed. Their
patience was amazing, and Seaman Isaac Morris wrote of this weary
inaction:

Nothing remarkable happened to us in the course of these three
months. Our provision, such as it was, did not cost us much
difficulty to procure, and we were supplied with fire-wood from
a small coppice about seven miles distant. We seldom failed of
bringing home something every night and generally had a hot supper.
The time passed as cheerfully as might be with poor fellows in such
circumstances as ours.

Again they set out on foot, in the month of May, after burdening their
backs with seal and armadillo meat, and traversed a barren, open
country until incessant cold rains chilled them to the bone and no
supplies of any kind were obtainable. There was prolonged argument,
and the majority was for returning once more to the hut they had left
behind as the nearest refuge. Back they toiled over the same old trail,
cast down, but not disheartened, and still loyal comrades who “bound
themselves never to quit each other unless compelled by a superior
force.” They had a certain amount of order and discipline, four of
them out hunting for food on one day and remaining in camp the next
day while the other four ranged the country for deer and the coast for
seal. Wild dogs were numerous, and several litters of puppies were
adopted until every man had a brace of them as his faithful friends and
helpers. Several young pigs were also taken into the family, and they
trotted contentedly along with the dogs.

The eight seamen lived in this strangely simple and solitary manner
until seven months had passed, and then they concluded to make another
attempt to escape from the bondage of circumstances. Not an Indian
had been seen, and there was no reason to believe that they had been
discovered or observed. They merited good fortune, did these stanch and
courageous castaways, but the curse of the _Wager_ had followed them.
While they were getting together supplies for another journey toward
Buenos Aires, Samuel Cooper, John Andrews, John Duck, and Isaac Morris
went some distance along the beach to hunt seals. Late in the day they
were returning to the hut when the dogs were seen to be running and
barking in much agitation. The four men hurried to the hut, which was
empty and plundered of muskets, powder, and ball, sealskin clothes,
dried meat--everything they possessed.

Scouting outside, one of the sailors shouted to Morris:

“Aye, Isaac, something much worse has happened, for yonder lie poor Guy
Broadwater and Benjamin Smith murdered.”

One poor fellow was found with his throat cut, and the other had been
stabbed in the breast. Their bodies were still warm, and, afraid the
assassins might be somewhere near, the four men ran hard and hid in a
rocky bight a mile away until next morning, for they had no firearms
left. Of the four who had been overtaken in this tragedy, Joseph Clinch
and John Allen had vanished, nor was any trace of them discovered. It
was sadly agreed that Indians must have killed two and carried the two
others away with them. The four survivors were deprived not only of
their comrades, but of their precious muskets and the means of making
fire. Never were men left more naked and defenseless in a hostile
wilderness. In this plight Samuel Cooper, John Andrews, John Duck, and
Isaac Morris trudged off for the third time to look for the mouth of
the River Plate and Buenos Aires.

With them trooped sixteen dogs and two pigs, and it must have been an
odd caravan to behold. They carried their provender on the hoof this
time. By following the sea-coast, they found pools of fresh water among
the sand-dunes, where the heavy rains had not yet filtered into the
ground, and a dead whale washed up on the beach served for several
hearty meals. They got along without great difficulty until ten days of
travel found them mired in endless swamps and bogs, which they could
find no way of crossing. Again they retreated to the starting-place at
the hut, but the amiable pigs were no longer in the troop. There were
not so many dogs, and their number steadily dwindled; for there would
have been no bill of fare without them.

Three months more the four unconquerable seamen lingered in their
exile, at their wits’ ends to plan a way of escape, because the exodus
to Buenos Aires had been given up as hopeless. Then they discovered
a large trunk of a fallen tree on the beach, and conceived the wild
notion of fashioning some kind of boat of it and hoisting a sail of
sealskins sewed together with sinews. They had no tools whatever,
barring a pocket-knife or two, but this could not discourage the handy
mariners. John Duck happened to remember that during the first journey
toward Buenos Aires eleven months before, he had thrown away his musket
because the lock was broken. It occurred to one of them that the iron
of the barrel might be pounded into something like a hatchet, and what
did the quartet do but take a little seal meat and water and walk sixty
miles to look for that musket. They found it, which was still more
wonderful, and beat half the length of the barrel flat, using stones as
hammer and anvil, and whetted an edge on the rough rocks.

They were about to attack the project of making a boat when a dozen
horses came galloping along the beach, and there were Indians on their
backs. They were as astonished as the British seamen, but had no
intention of shedding blood, and promptly whisked their prisoners up
behind them. At a great pace the Indian horsemen rode several miles
inland to a camp where a dozen of them were rounding up wild horses.
It affords a glimpse of what the life had been in that hut on the
Patagonian coast to hear Isaac Morris say:

“We were treated with great humanity; they killed a horse, kindled a
fire, and roasted part of it, which to us who had been eating raw flesh
three months was most delicious entertainment. They also gave each of
us a piece of an old blanket to cover our nakedness.”

Two hundred miles back into the mountainous interior, where white men
had never been seen, the wandering party of horse-hunting Indians
carried the four sailors. These were sporting savages with a taste for
gambling, and it is chronicled that “in this place we were bought and
sold four different times, for a pair of spurs, a brass pan, ostrich
feathers and such trifles, which was the low price generally set on
each of us; and sometimes we were played away at dice, so that we
changed masters several times in a day.”

A few weeks later the band of nomad Indians was joined by other
parties, and together, with a train of fifteen hundred horses, they
moved by easy stages far inland, almost a thousand miles from the
coast, and came in four months’ time to the capital, or chief town of
the tribe, where the king claimed the seamen as his own property. He
spoke a little Spanish, and hated the Spaniards so cordially that his
friendly regard was offered these wanderers because they had served in
an English man-of-war of a squadron sent against the enemy. They were
slaves, it is true, but this condition was tempered with kindness, and
for eight months they lived and labored among these wild horsemen of
South America. When the season of spring arrived, the tribe broke camp
for the long pilgrimage to the pampas and the chase of the wild horses
which supplied food and raiment.

The customary route to the sea passed within a hundred miles of Buenos
Aires, and the sailors persuaded their masters that it was worth while
trying to obtain ransom for them. At last there was a tangible hope
of extricating themselves, but it brought joy only to three of the
four comrades. Poor John Duck happened to be a mulatto born in London,
and his brown skin won the fancy of the Indians, who insisted that he
was of their own blood. Therefore they refused to part with him and
he was sold for a very high price to another chief in a region even
more remote, and this was the last of him. His three shipmates were
very sorrowful at leaving him, no doubt, and it must have been an
incident deeply moving when they shook hands and went their opposite
ways, for they had suffered manifold things together and carried it
off magnificently. And in their minds there must have been the memory
of that vow they had sworn together “never to quit each other unless
compelled by a superior force.”

The chief was faithful to his word in sending a messenger to Buenos
Aires, where the Spanish governor expressed his willingness to buy
three English prisoners at the bargain price of ninety dollars for the
lot.

In this manner were Midshipman Morris and Samuel Cooper and John
Andrews delivered from their captivity in the wilds of Patagonia,
though they were not yet to see the long road home to England. The
Spanish governor of Buenos Aires behaved toward them like a very
courteous gentleman, but felt it his bounden duty to labor with them
for the good of their souls. “He sent for us several times,” Midshipman
Morris tells us, “and earnestly urged us to turn Catholics and serve
the king of Spain; to which we answered that we were Protestants and
true Englishmen and hoped to die so. Many tempting offers were made to
seduce us but, thank God, we resisted them all.”

This obstinacy vexed the conscientious governor, and he sent the three
heretics on board of the man-of-war _Asia_, the flag-ship of Admiral
Pizarro’s squadron, which was then lying at Montevideo. Aboard the
_Asia_ the three Englishmen were confined more than a year, with
sixteen other unlucky seamen of their own race. They complained that
they were treated more like galley-slaves than prisoners of war, and it
was inevitable that they should try to escape. A sentry was tied and
gagged one night, and the Britons swam for the shore, a quarter of a
mile away. Most of them were overtaken in a boat, but Isaac Morris and
one sailor, naked as the day they were born, scrambled into the jungle,
and had such a piteous time of it that they were glad to surrender to
the laborers of the nearest plantation. Taken back to the ship, they
were thrust into the stocks, neck and heels, four hours a day for a
fortnight as a hint to discourage such rash enterprise.

Admiral Pizarro had journeyed overland to Chile, and in the very
leisurely course of time he returned to Buenos Aires to set sail for
Spain in his flag-ship, having achieved nothing more than a wild-goose
chase in quest of the daring Anson. 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.

One of these eleven Indians was a chief by the name of Orellana and a
man to be considered noteworthy even in that age of high adventure.
When dragged aboard the Spanish flag-ship, he and his fellows were, of
course, handled like dogs,

being treated with much insolence and barbarity by the Spaniards,
the meanest officers among whom were accustomed to beat them on the
slightest pretences. Orellana and his followers, though apparently
patient and submissive, meditated a severe revenge. He endeavored
to converse with such of the English as understood the Spanish
language and seemed very desirous of learning how many of them were
on board and which they were. But not finding them so precipitate
and vindictive as he expected, after distantly sounding them,
he proceeded no farther in respect to their participation, but
resolved to trust his enterprise to himself and his ten faithful
followers.

In short, these eleven unarmed Indians were planning an uprising in a
sixty-gun ship with a crew of nearly five hundred Spaniards. It was
an enterprise so utterly insane that the level-headed English seamen
refused to consider it. They regarded Orellana and his ten comrades as
poor, misguided wretches who knew no better and who had been driven
quite mad by abuse. Of all the tales of mutiny on the high seas this
must be set down as unparalleled, and it seems to fit in, as a sort of
climax, with the varied and almost endless adventures of the people who
were wrecked in the _Wager_.

The eleven Indians first stole a few sailors’ knives, which was fairly
easy to do, and then they manufactured the singular weapon still in use
on the plains of the Argentine and which Midshipman Morris described as
follows:

They were secretly employed in cutting out thongs from raw-hides,
to the ends of which they fixed the double-headed shot of the small
quarter-deck guns. This, when swung round their heads and let fly,
is a dangerous weapon and, as already observed, they are extremely
expert with it. An outrage committed on the chief himself,
precipitated the execution of his daring enterprise; for one of the
officers, a brutal fellow, having ordered him aloft, of which he
was incapable of performance, then, under pretence of disobedience,
cruelly beat him and left him bleeding on the deck.

It was a day or two after this, in the cool of the evening, when the
Spanish officers were strolling upon the poop, that Orellana and his
ten companions came toward them and drifted close to the open doors of
the great cabin in which Admiral Pizarro and his staff were lounging,
with cigars and wine. The boatswain roughly ordered the Indians away.
With a plan of action carefully preconceived, the intruders slowly
retreated, but six of them remained together, while two moved to each
of the gangways, and so blocked the approaches to the quarter-deck. As
soon as they were stationed, Orellana yelled a war whoop, “which is the
harshest and most terrific noise that can be imagined.”

With knives and with the deadly bolas, or thonged missiles, the eleven
Indians made a slaughter-house of the flag-ship’s spacious poop.
Spanish sentinels of the guard, seamen on watch, boatswain’s mates,
and the sailors at the steering tackles, sailing masters and dandified
officers, were mowed down as by a murderous hurricane before they could
find their wits or their arms. In the fury of this first onslaught
twenty of the ship’s company were laid dead on the spot and as many
more were disabled. Those who survived were in no mood to mobilize any
resistance. Some tumbled into the great cabin, where they extinguished
the candles and barricaded the doors, while others flew into the
main-shrouds and took refuge in the tops or in the rigging.

It was sheer panic which spread forward along the decks until it
reached the forecastle. The officers were killed or in hiding, and the
leaderless sailors assumed that the English prisoners were leading the
upheaval. A few of the wounded men scrambled forward in the darkness
and told the watch on deck that the after guard had been wiped out and
the ship was in the hands of mutineers. Thereupon the Spanish seamen
prudently locked themselves in the forecastle or swarmed out on the
bowsprit and into the fore rigging. Orellana and his ten Indians were
completely in possession of the sixty-gun flag-ship, the admiral, and
the crew of almost five hundred Spaniards. For the moment they had
achieved the impossible.

[Illustration: BRIG “TOPAZ” OF NEWBURYPORT, BUILT IN 1807

Original in the Marine Room, Peabody Museum, Salem. Painted by Anton
Roux, Marseilles]

The officers and crew, who had escaped into different parts of
the ship, were anxious only for their own safety, and incapable
of forming any plan for quelling the insurrection. The yells of
the Indians, indeed, the groans of the wounded, and the confused
clamors of the crew, all heightened by the obscurity prevailing,
greatly magnified the danger at first. The Spanish, likewise,
sensible of the disaffection of the impressed men, and at the same
time conscious of the barbarity their prisoners had experienced,
believed that it was a general conspiracy and that their own
destruction was inevitable.

A strange interval of silence fell upon the bloodstained ship as she
rolled, without guidance, to the impulses of a gentle sea, while the
canvas flapped and the yards creaked as the breeze took her aback.
The conquering Indians were vigilant and anxious, unable to leave the
quarter-deck, where they held the mastery, the Spanish crew lying low,
as it were, and wondering what might happen next. Orellana promptly
broke open the arms-chest, which had been conveyed to the poop a few
days previously as a safeguard against mutiny. In it he confidently
expected to find cutlasses enough to equip his men, and with these
weapons they would hew their way into the great cabin and cut down the
surviving officers. Alas! for the cleverly contrived plans, the chest
contained only muskets and pistols, and the Indians had never learned
how to use firearms.

Meanwhile that high and mighty personage Admiral Pizarro was using
animated language in the great cabin, and Spanish oaths are beyond all
others for crackling eloquence. His guests had begun to compose their
scrambled wits, and through the windows and port-holes they were able
to talk things over with their friends who were hiding in the gun-room
and between decks. From these sources it was learned that those unholy
devils, the English prisoners, were not concerned in the hurricane of
a rebellion, and that the prodigious affair was solely the work of the
eleven rampant Indians. The admiral looked less disconsolate, and his
officers breathed easier. It was resolved to storm the quarter-deck
before the storm gathered more headway.

There were pistols in the great cabin, but neither powder nor ball,
but a bucket was lowered to the gun-room on the deck below, and plenty
of ammunition was fished up. Cautiously unbarring the cabin doors,
they began to take pot-shots at the Indians, and were lucky enough to
shoot Orellana through the head. When his followers saw him fall and
discovered that he was dead, to a man these ten heroes leaped over the
bulwark and perished in the sea. They knew how to finish in style, and
the admiral was deprived of the pleasure of swinging them to a yard-arm
to the flourish of trumpet and drum.

Midshipman Isaac Morris and his two shipmates of the _Wager_ witnessed
this splendid undertaking, or bits of it, as they paced to and fro
under guard in the middle of the ship. It seemed as though they might
be granted a quieter life by way of a change, but when the flag-ship
reached Spain they were hustled ashore and put into a prison for a
fortnight, where they were chained together like common criminals and
fed on bread and water. After that they were marched off to an island
by a file of musketeers, and held for fourteen weeks in a sort of penal
colony among thieves and felons. The longest lane has a turning, and
there came at length a royal order providing that the three Englishmen
should be sent to Portugal. At Oporto the English consul gave them
quarters and a little money, and the end of the story is thus described
by Isaac Morris:

We embarked in the _Charlotte_, scow, on the 18th of April, 1746,
and under convoy of the _York_ and _Folkstone_ men-of-war, arrived
at London on the 5th of July following; three only of the eight men
left on the coast of Patagonia, Samuel Cooper, John Andrews, and
myself, being so happy as once more to see their native country.

The _Wager_ had sailed on her fatal voyage on September 18, 1740, and
had been lost in May of 1741. These three survivors had therefore spent
more than five years in the endeavor to reach home. By devious ways
three parties of the _Wager’s_ people had finally extricated themselves
from the toils of misfortune, Midshipman Byron and Captain Cheap, and
a few of those who had lived through the cruise in the long-boat, and
these three men who had been marooned. Left unfinished were those other
tragic stories, shrouded behind the curtain of fate, the four marines
and their farewell huzza, the crew of the barge who basely abandoned
their companions, and the eleven people who requested to be set ashore
in Patagonia sooner than endure the horrors of the long-boat. The wreck
of the _Wager_ is a yarn of many strands, an epic of salt water, and
still memorable, although the ship was lost almost two hundred years
ago.

CHAPTER XIII

THE GRIM TALE OF THE _NOTTINGHAM GALLEY_

Within sight of Portsmouth Harbor, no more than a dozen miles off the
coast where Maine and New Hampshire meet, lies Boon Island, small and
rock-bound, upon which a tall lighthouse flings its bright message to
seaward. It is in the track of the coastwise fleets of fishermen and
trading schooners, of yachts and steamers, of the varied traffic which
makes those waters populous; but Boon Island was a very lonely place
two hundred years ago. And if it is true, as many mariners believe,
that the ghosts of dead sailors return from Davy Jones’ locker to haunt
the scenes of their torments in shipwreck, then Boon Island must be
tenanted by some of the crew of the _Nottingham Galley_.

The story survives in the narrative of the disaster as written by the
master of the vessel, Captain John Deane. It was printed as a quaint
and unusual little book, which is now exceedingly difficult to find,
and the fifth edition bears the date of 1762. 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. When Captain John Deane took his pen in hand to set
down his experience, it was as though his conscience had driven him to
the task, and he expresses this prompting in a solemn preface, which
reads:

As for my own part, I think I have just grounds to venture
this small narrative into the American world as an humble
acknowledgement to Almighty God for his wonderful preservation
of us, and hoping it may be of use to others, should the like
unhappy circumstances ever attend them. I had indeed thoughts of
perpetuating the memory of our deliverance in a different manner,
but my innocent intentions met with an unexpected opposition that
induced me to have recourse to this present method; and I hastened
the execution in 1727, whilst there were living witnesses in New
England to attend the truth of our signal escape from Boon Island.

And now I again recommend it to the serious perusal of all, but
especially seafaring men, who of all others are most liable to
sudden dangers, through the natural inconstancy of the Elements
they converse with in pursuit of their lawful employments; and
consequently ought to lead the most considerate, religious lives
in order to face death, if it be God’s Will, in the most dreadful
form, with a Christian resolution. For, as to that set of men who
affect to pass for Wits and Bravoes by giving a ludicrous turn to
everything grave and solemn; and assuming an air of intrepidity,
by horrid oaths and imprecations, before the too near approaches
of danger, I have always observed them, first of all others, to
sink under despair, upon a prospect of inevitable death; even so
as shamefully to desert all the necessary means that offered for a
possibility of their deliverance.

The _Nottingham Galley_, a small vessel of one hundred and twenty
tons, sailed from London on September 25, 1710, touching at Ireland
to take on some butter and cheese besides her cargo of cordage and
general merchandise, which was consigned to Boston. She carried a crew
of fourteen men and mounted ten guns as a proper precaution against
pirates and privateers. Against the westerly winds of autumn the ship
made crawling progress, and it was almost three months later before
Captain Deane made a landfall on the snow-covered coast of New England.
He did not know where he was and thick weather shut down so that for
twelve days longer he was battering about and trying to work a safe
distance offshore. The chronometer was then unknown, the “hog-yoke,” or
early quadrant, had nothing like the exactitude of the sextant, and
most charts were incorrect. 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.”

They were within sight of the mainland, as daylight disclosed, and the
captain identified the nearest shore as Cape Neddick, while vessels
could be seen passing in and out of Portsmouth Harbor. It was Christmas
week, and the little island was blanketed in snow. The only shelter
from the freezing winds was a tent which was made of a torn sail, and
there was no fire to warm them. “They fought to procure this blessing
by a variety of means,” related Captain Deane, “such as flint, steel,
and gunpowder, and afterwards by a drill of very swift motion, but all
the materials in their possession naturally susceptible of fire being,
on this occasion, thoroughly water-soaked, after eight or ten days’
unsuccessful labor they gave over the fruitless attempt.”

The only food washed ashore from the wreck consisted of three cheeses
and some beef bones, which they shared without quarreling, and in
fact, the spirit of these poor mariners was singularly unselfish and
manly throughout. By vote it was agreed that Captain Deane should hold
the same authority as he exercised on board ship. They felt certain
of rescue, because they were within sight of port, and the captain
encouraged them

with hopes of being discovered by fishing shallops or other
vessels passing that way, although all the while he was conscious
to himself that rarely anything of this kind happened at that
unseasonable time of the year; however, he thought it good policy
to put the best face on the matter and take this advantage of their
ignorance and credulity; since he already too plainly observed
their great dejection and frequent relapses into an utter distrust
of Divine Providence.

A boat was built after infinite labor, by men who had nothing whatever
to eat, and the surf beat it to fragments as soon as it was launched.
In this hour of inexpressible disappointment they stood and watched
three small sailing vessels pass the island at a distance of a few
miles, and they could not kindle a smoke to make a signal. As a last
hope, a raft was tied together of two bits of spar only twelve feet
long, with a deck of plank four feet wide, a mere chip of a raft with
a sail made of two canvas hammocks.

This was the project of a “Swede, a stout, brave fellow that had
unhappily lost the use of both his feet from frost since he came upon
the rock.” It was his idea that two men might be able to paddle and
sail this contrivance to the mainland and so effect a deliverance. At
the first endeavor to get the raft clear of the breakers it upset and
nearly drowned the Swede and another sailor who had offered to go with
him. The latter was dragged out almost dead, but the Swede swam to the
rocks and was for righting the raft and setting out again, although the
mast and sail had been lost. The incident is worth describing in the
words of Captain Deane.

The master then desired the Swede to assist in getting the raft out
of the water in order to wait a more favorable opportunity; but the
Swede, persisting in his resolution although unable to stand upon
his feet, and as he was kneeling on the rock, caught hold on the
master’s hand and with much vehemency beseeching him to accompany
him, said,

“I am sure I must die; however, I have great hopes of being the
means of preserving your life, and the rest of the people’s. If you
will not go with me, I beg your assistance to turn the raft and
help me upon it, for I am resolutely bent to venture, even though
by myself alone.”

The master used farther dissuasives, representing the
impossibility of reaching the mainland in twice the time they might
have done before they were disarmed of their mast and sail, but
the Swede remained inflexible, affirming, “I had rather perish in
the sea than continue one day more in this miserable condition.”
By this time another man, animated by his example and offering to
go with him, the master consented and gave them some money that
accidentally was in his pocket, fixed them on the raft, and helped
them to launch off from the rock, committing them to the mercy
of the seas. Their last words at parting were very moving and
delivered in a pathetic accent, “Pray, Sir, oblige all the people
to join in prayers for us as long as you can see us.”

All to a man crept out of the tent at this doleful separation and
performed the request with much devotion. About sunset they judged
the raft to be half way to land and hoped they might gain the shore
by two in the morning, but in the night the wind blew very hard,
and two days later the raft was found on the shore of the mainland,
about a mile distant from the body of the other man, driven
likewise on shore with his paddle still fast to his wrist, but the
bold Swede was never seen more.

The ship’s carpenter died of hunger at the end of a fortnight, during
which rock-weed and mussels had kept the breath of life in them.
Inevitably men in their condition were bound to turn to thoughts of
preserving their own existence a little longer by eating the body of
the carpenter. How they discussed it and with what results is told by
the unhappy Captain Deane.

The master returning to his tent with the most acute sense of the
various miseries they were involved in, was ready to expire with
faintness and anguish; and placing himself so as to receive some
refreshment from sleep, he observed an unusual air of intentness
in the countenances of all the people; when, after some pause, Mr.
Whitworth, a young gentleman, his mother’s darling son, delicately
educated, amidst so great an affluence as to despise common food,
began in the name of the assembly to court the master’s concurrence
in converting the human carcass into the matter of their
nourishment; and was immediately seconded by a great majority,
three only opposing on account of their esteeming it a heinous sin.

This affair had been thus consulted and concluded upon in the
master’s absence, and the present method concerted of making it
known by a gentleman reputed to be much in his favor. The master
remained in his former posture, observing an invincible silence,
while they were urging their desires with irresistible vehemence;
for nothing that ever befell him from the day of his birth, not
even the dread and distress of his soul upon quitting the wreck
when he did not expect to live a minute, was so amazingly shocking
as this unexpected proposal. But after a short interval, he
maturely weighed all circumstances and pronounced in favor of the
majority, arguing the improbability of its being a sin to eat human
flesh in a case of such necessity, providing they were in no ways
accessory to the taking away of life.

The body of the carpenter was their sustenance until a shallop, sailing
out of Portsmouth, discovered the fragments of a tent among the rocks
and snow of Boon Island and a few figures of men feebly crawling out
of the shelter. The crew of the _Nottingham Galley_ were carried to
the little seaport at the mouth of the Piscataqua, and there all of
them recovered, although seriously crippled because of frozen hands and
feet. At the end of Captain Deane’s story is the following note:

At the first publication of this narrative, Mr. Whitworth and the
mate were then living in England, and the master survived until
the 19th of August, 1761. And out of sincere regard to the memory
of Captain Deane, and that such an instance of Divine Providence
should not be buried in oblivion, Mr. Miles Whitworth, son of the
above Mr. Whitworth, now republishes this narrative, hoping (with
a Divine blessing) that it may prove of service to reclaim the
unthinking part of seafaring men trading in and to New England.

The tale of the _Nottingham Galley_ suggests other episodes in which
living men of a ship’s crew were chosen by lot to be sacrificed as
food for the others. As dramatic as any of them was the fate of the
American sloop _Peggy_, which became waterlogged while homeward bound
to New York from the Azores. Food and water gone, there were wine and
brandy in the cargo, unluckily, and the sailors got drunk and stayed
so much of the time. On Christmas day a sail was sighted, and the ship
bore down to speak the drifting hulk of the _Peggy_. For some reason
this other vessel, after promising to send bread and beef aboard or
to take the people off if they so preferred, filled away and resumed
her course. Captain Harrison of the _Peggy_ had taken to his bed with
rheumatism, but he crawled on deck to watch the faithless ship abandon
him while his crew cursed like madmen and shouted their appeals for
help.

For sixteen days the people of the _Peggy_ lived on candles, whale-oil,
and barnacles scraped from the ship’s side. Then the crew, led by the
mate, invaded Captain Harrison’s cabin and told him they could hold
out no longer. They had eaten the leather packing of the pump, they
had chewed the leather buttons off their jackets, and liquor would not
keep them alive. It was now their intention to cast lots for a victim,
and the captain was asked to supervise the business. He refused to have
anything to do with it, which excited a hubbub of anger, and the mate
announced that nobody would be exempted. The captain was to stand his
chance with the rest. They tramped out of the cabin, remained a little
while in the steerage, and returned to say that the lots had been
drawn, and a negro slave who was in the cargo had received the fatal
number.

Captain Harrison, bed-ridden as he was, had the courage to tell the men
that he suspected them of dealing unfairly with the poor negro, and
that he had not been allowed a chance for his life. While they were
wrangling, the slave came running into the cabin to beg the captain’s
protection; but he was dragged out and shot and turned over to the cook
and the big copper pots in the galley. For nine days this sufficed to
keep the crew alive, while Captain Harrison steadfastly refused to
touch the food they offered him. Then the mate and the men trooped into
the cabin again and roughly demanded that the skipper take charge of
the lottery.

This time he consented in order to be certain of fair play. Painfully
raising himself upon his elbow, he tore up strips of paper and wrote
numbers on them. In grim silence the six men who were left alive closed
their fingers upon the slips of paper, and a seaman named David Flat
groaned as he discovered that his was the ticket of death. Otherwise
there was no noise in the cabin.

The shock which this produced was so great that the whole crew
remained motionless for a considerable time; and so they might have
continued much longer had not the victim, who appeared perfectly
resigned to his fate, expressed himself in these words:

“Dear friends and messmates, all I have to beg of you is to
dispatch me as soon as you did the negro, and to put me to as
little torture as possible.”

David Flat then turned to another seaman, James Doud, who had put
the bullet into the slave and said:

“It is my wish that you should shoot me.”

Doud was much affected, but consented to attend to the obsequies of
unfortunate David Flat, who was the most popular man in the forecastle.
The victim then requested a brief respite in which he might prepare his
soul to meet its Maker. This was very readily granted, and meanwhile
the cook kindled a fire and got the water hot. Friendship was stronger
than hunger, however, and there was so much reluctance to execute the
sentence that it was determined to grant David Flat a respite until
eleven o’clock of the following morning,

trusting that Divine Goodness would in the interval open some other
source of relief. At the same time they solicited the captain to
read prayers, a task which, collecting the utmost effort of his
strength, he was just able to perform.

It was a scene to linger in one’s memory, the waterlogged sloop with
her sails streaming in useless ribbons from a broken mast, the little
cabin with the skipper almost dead in his bunk, and the group of
starved and wistful seamen who bowed their heads while he brokenly
whispered the words of the prayer-book. As soon as he had finished,
they crept out to rejoin David Flat, who had preferred to be absent
from his own funeral service. Through the companionway the captain
overheard them talking to him

with great earnestness and affection, and expressing their hope
that God would interpose for his preservation. They assured him
also that although they had never yet been able to catch a single
fish, they would again put out their hooks and try whether in that
manner any relief could be obtained.

There was little comfort for David Flat in this commiseration, and the
situation benumbed his mind so that he was in a stupor, which changed
to raving madness during the night. At eight o’clock next morning
Captain Harrison was thinking of this faithful seaman of his who had
only three hours more to live, when two of the others came into the
cabin and took hold of his hands. Their agitation was apparent, but
they seemed unable to speak and explain themselves, and he surmised
that they had concluded to put him to death instead of David Flat. He
therefore groped for his pistol, but the sailors snatched it away, and
managed to tell him that a sail had been sighted, a large vessel to
leeward which had altered her course and was beating up to them as fast
as possible.

The men on deck had been similarly affected, losing all power of
speech for the moment; but presently they hurried into the cabin,
with strength renewed, to shout at the captain that a ship was coming
to save them. They tried to make poor David Flat comprehend the
tremendous fact, but he was babbling of other things, and his wits
were still all astray. During the business of the death-sentence,
which had been conducted with such extraordinary dignity, the men had
remained sober, keeping clear of the brandy-keg, but now they proposed
to celebrate. Captain Harrison succeeded in dissuading all excepting
the mate, who filled a can and sat down by himself to liquor up. And
so they were making a decent finish of it, although their nerves were
tortured beyond endurance, when the breeze died out, and the other ship
lay becalmed two or three miles away. They remembered the dreadful
disappointment of Christmas day, when another ship had deserted them
after steering close enough to hail the sloop.

This blessed stranger, however, lowered a boat, and the oars flashed on
the shining sea until the rescuers were alongside the _Peggy_.

As the captain was incapable of moving, they lifted him out of the
cabin and, lowering him into the boat with ropes, he was followed
by his people, among whom was David Flat, still raving. Just when
putting off, it was discovered that the mate was missing. He was
immediately summoned and, after his can of liquor, had no more than
ability to crawl to the gunwale, having forgot everything that had
happened. The unfortunate drunken wretch having been got down, the
saviors rowed away to their own ship, which they reached in about
an hour.

This vessel was the _Susannah_ of London, commanded by Captain
Thomas Evers, who was engaged in the Virginia trade and was now
returning from Virginia to London. He received the _Peggy’s_ people
with all possible tenderness and humanity. The _Susannah_ proceeded
on her voyage, and though in a very shattered condition and so much
reduced in provisions that it was necessary to put her people on
short allowance, she reached England early in March. The mate, as
also James Doud who shot the negro, and one James Warren, a seaman,
died during the passage. Lemuel Ashley, Samuel Wentworth, and
David Flat, who was to have been shot for food, all survived. Flat
continued raving mad during the voyage, but whether he afterwards
recovered is not ascertained. When Captain Harrison came on shore,
he made an oath to the truth of the preceding melancholy facts in
order that the interests of his insurers might be preserved.

In the case of the English ship _Barrett_, which was wrecked in
mid-Atlantic in January, 1821, the method of choosing the man who
should die to serve as food was sufficiently novel and ingenious to
merit attention. She was a much larger vessel than the _Peggy_, with
a crew of sixteen, and had sailed from St. John, New Brunswick, in
command of Captain Faragar, with a cargo of timber for Liverpool. Heavy
gales blew her canvas away and strained her hull until it filled with
water. Rations were reduced to two ounces of bread and a pint of water
a day until this was almost gone. Then a sail was descried, and a brig
bowled down to pass within hail, the master promising to send aboard
what provisions he could spare. Then the wind chopped around to the
westward, and, precisely as had happened to the sloop _Peggy_, the brig
hauled her braces, sheeted her topsails home, and went driving away on
her course.

Mr. MacCloud, the mate of the _Barrett_, was a hardy young Scot with
the endurance of iron and the soul of a hero. Day after day the ship
wallowed in the wicked winter weather of the Western Ocean, and only
the timber in the flooded hold kept her afloat. Cold and hunger laid
the crew low until only the mate and three men were able to stand a
watch on deck; but he kept a little canvas on her and tended the tiller
and somehow jammed her along until they had sailed six hundred miles
toward the Irish coast.

Every eatable was consumed: candles, oil--all were gone, and they
passed the long, dreary, stormy nights of sixteen and seventeen
hours in utter darkness, huddled together in the steerage,
imploring the Almighty to help them, yet feeling reckless of
existence. Such was their condition about the middle of January,
and no one but the mate paid the slightest attention to the vessel.

Captain Faragar succumbed to the strain, and died with a farewell
message to his wife and children. The time came at length when one of
the sailors, more brutalized than the rest, broke out with the words:

“Here we are, sixteen of us, perishing for food, and what prospect
is there before us? Wouldn’t it be better--”

He hesitated, while his companions held their breath and
comprehended what was in his mind.

“Damn all ceremony!” was the conclusion which they expected and
yet dreaded to hear. “One man must die that the rest may live, and
that’s the bloody truth of it.”

They agreed with him, nodding their heads and refusing to look at
one another. Then followed a long dispute over the fairest manner of
letting chance decide the choice. It was obvious that every man had a
natural anxiety to feel assured of no loaded dice or marked cards in
this momentous game. There were objections to the traditional lottery
of high and low numbers, and finally it was decided that sixteen pieces
of rope-yarn should be cut by the mate. Fourteen of these were to be of
precisely the same length, one a little shorter, and another shorter
still. The sixteen pieces of rope-yarn were to be shoved through a
crack in the bulkhead of the steward’s storeroom, the ends all even
and just long enough for a man to take one in his fingers and pull it
through the crack. The one who pulled out the strand that was a little
shorter was to be dished up for his messmates, and the man who drew
the strand that was shorter still had the unpleasant duty of acting as
butcher.

The mate cut the rope-yarn, as requested, and arranged the sixteen
lengths all in a row in the crack of the bulkhead. The men stood
waiting the word, very reluctant to pluck out the ends of tarry cord,
until Mr. MacCloud exclaimed:

“My lads, let us put it off until to-morrow. We have endured thus far,
and a few hours longer cannot make much difference. Who knows what
Providence may have in store for us?”

Some consented, while others were for going through with it at once.
To-morrow came, and no help was in sight. They shambled into the
steward’s storeroom and pulled the rope-yarns through the crack.
Presently there was one man less on the muster-roll of the _Barrett_.
Two or three days later the ceremony was repeated. Before it became
necessary to doom a third man, the mate came below, a spy-glass in his
hand, and he was trembling so violently that he clutched the table for
support. “A sail,” he stammered, and they followed him on deck, where
the winter day was dying into dusk. In desperate need of making some
sort of signal, Mr. MacCloud emptied a powder-flask upon the windlass,
fired a pistol into it, and a thick column of smoke billowed skyward.

The other ship observed it, and hoisted an ensign. Twelve of the
_Barrett’s_ company were alive, and they were safely transferred to
the _Ann_ of New York, bound to Liverpool. The waterlogged _Barrett_
drifted on her aimless course, a derelict haunted by fearful memories,
and from a crack in the bulkhead of the steward’s storeroom still hung
the ends of a row of rope-yarns which had been made ready for the next
game of chance.

In 1799 six soldiers of the British artillery garrison at St. Helena
concocted a plot to desert and stow themselves away in an American
ship, the _Columbia_, which was then in harbor. Their escape was
discovered soon after the Yankee crew had smuggled them on board, and
they could hear the alarm sounded and could see the lanterns glimmer
along the sea-wall. Afraid that the _Columbia_ would be searched,
the fugitive red-coats stole a whale-boat from another ship, and the
sympathetic American skipper gave them a bag of bread, a keg of water,
a compass, and a quadrant. It was rather to be expected that a New
England mariner who could remember Bunker Hill and Saratoga would lend
a hand to any enterprise which annoyed the British army and diminished
its fighting strength.

The six deserters pulled out to sea in the hope of finding the island
of Ascension, which lay eight hundred miles to the northwest of St.
Helena. Corporal Parr had been a seaman, and he thought he knew how to
shoot the sun and figure out his position; but after a week of fine
weather it was his uneasy conviction that they must have run past
Ascension. With a sail made of their shirts stitched together, they
bore away for the coast of South America on the chance of finding Rio
Janeiro. Provisions were so short that they limited themselves to one
ounce of bread and two mouthfuls of water a day.

After a fortnight at sea they were chewing their leather shoes, and
Private John Brown, in a statement prepared after the rescue, explained
how they selected one of their number to be used as food for the others.

Parr, Brighouse, Conway, and myself proposed to scuttle the boat
and let her go down, to put us out of our misery, but the other two
objected, observing that God, who had made man, always found him
something to eat. On the twenty-second day M’Kinnon proposed that
it would be better to cast lots for one of us to die in order to
save the rest, to which we consented. William Parr, being seized
two days before with the spotted fever, was excluded. He wrote the
numbers and put them into a hat, and we drew them out blindfolded
and put them in our pockets.

Parr then asked whose lot it was to die, none of us knowing what
number we had in our pocket, and each praying to God that it might
not be his lot. It was agreed that Number 5 should die, and the
lots being unfolded, M’Kinnon’s was number 5. We had concluded that
he, on whom the lot fell, should bleed himself to death, for which
purpose we had provided ourselves with sharpened nails which were
got from the boat. With one of these M’Kinnon cut himself in three
places, in his foot, hand, and wrist and praying God to forgive his
sins he died in about a quarter of an hour.

Three of the deserters lived to reach the South American coast, and
were taken to Rio in a Portuguese ship. One might think that Private
John Brown had suffered enough for his crime of running away from the
Royal Artillery, but Captain Elphinstone of H. M. S. _Diamond_ had him
put in irons and sent to Cape Town. There he was pressed into the navy,
but his conscience gave him no rest, and after receiving his discharge
he made his way to St. Helena and gave himself up. To the officers who
conducted his court martial he explained:

“I was determined to surrender myself at the first opportunity in order
to relate my sufferings to the men of this garrison and to deter others
from attempting so mad a scheme.”

CHAPTER XIV

THE STORM-SWEPT FLEET OF ADMIRAL GRAVES

To observe what might be called shipwreck on a grand scale, it is
necessary to hark back to the days of fleets and convoys under sail,
when a hundred or two hundred merchant vessels and men-of-war made
a long voyage together. If such an argosy chanced to be caught in a
hurricane, the tragedy was apt to be tremendous, surpassing anything of
the kind in the hazards of modern seafaring. In April, 1782, Admiral
George Rodney, in a great sea-battle whose issue was vital to the
British Empire, whipped the French fleet of De Grasse off the island of
Dominica, in the West Indies. It was a victory which enabled Rodney to
write, “Within two little years, I have taken two Spanish, one French,
and one Dutch admirals.” The French ships which struck their flags to
him included the huge _Ville de Paris_ of 110 guns, which had flown
De Grasse’s pennant; the _Glorieux_ and _Hector_ of seventy-four guns
each; the _Ardent_, _Caton_, and _Jason_ of sixty-four guns each.

As soon as these prizes could be repaired, they were ordered to
sail for England, with several of the British ships of the line as
an escort, and with them went more than a hundred merchantmen from
the West Indies. In command was Admiral Graves of Rodney’s fleet,
a sailor who was to prove himself as noble in misfortune as he
had been illustrious in action. His ships were in no condition to
encounter heavy weather, for the battle had pounded and shattered both
antagonists, and refitting had to be done in makeshift fashion for lack
of dock-yards and material. British bluejackets and French prisoners
were blithely willing, however, to run the risk of keeping afloat so
long as they were homeward bound. The _Ardent_ and the _Jason_ came
so near to sinking, even in smooth seas, that they had to be ordered
back to Jamaica, but the rest of the fleet moved on until a few of
the merchant ships parted company to steer for New York, leaving
ninety-three sail in all to cross the Atlantic.

The season was September, and strong gales blew from the eastward,
which made it weary work thrashing into the head seas. Two more of the
crippled French men-of-war signaled that they were in distress, and
the admiral told them to bear away for Halifax. At length the wind
shifted suddenly to the northward and increased to a roaring storm.
Foul weather had been expected, and from his flagship, the _Ramillies_,
Admiral Graves warned the scattered fleet to close in and snug down.
They came straggling in from the cloudy horizon, upper sails furled,
decks streaming, until at sunset the anxious flock was within sight of
the shepherd, and the fluttering flags passed the word to make ready
for the worst.

The _Ramillies_, a majestic seventy-four-gun ship, was almost
overwhelmed before daylight, mainmast gone by the board, all her
upper spars splintered, rudder torn away, and the seas washing clean
over her. The admiral took it with unruffled courage, although he was
flooded out of his cabin, and arrived on deck with one leg in his
breeches and his boots in his hand. For all he knew, the ship was about
to go to the bottom,

but he ordered two of the lieutenants to examine into the state of
the affairs below, and to keep a sufficient number of people at the
pumps, while he himself and the captain kept the deck to encourage
the men to clear away the wreckage which, by beating against the
sides of the ship, had stripped off the copper sheathing and
exposed the seams so much to the sea that the decayed oakum washed
out and the whole frame became at once exceedingly porous and leaky.

The situation of the _Ramillies_ seemed bad enough, but dawn disclosed
other ships which were much worse off. Close to leeward was a large
vessel, the _Dutton_, which had been a famous East Indiaman. She was
lying flat upon her side, while the crew struggled to cut away the
masts. Presently the naval lieutenant in command was seen to jump into
the sea, which instantly obliterated him. A few of the crew slid one
of the boats off the deck, and were whirled away in the foam and spray
which soon engulfed them. Presently the ship dived under and was seen
no more, and the last glimpse, as she miserably foundered, was the
ensign hoisted union down, which gleamed like a bit of flame. Of the
ninety-odd ships which had been seen in the convoy only a dozen hours
earlier, no more than twenty could be counted. Some had been whirled
away like chips before the storm, while others had gone down during the
night and left no trace.

Hull down was descried the _Canada_; the _Centaur_ reeled far to
windward; and the _Glorieux_ was a distant hulk, all three of them
dismasted and apparently sinking. Of these stout British men-of-war
only the _Canada_ survived, and brought her people safely through.
The _Ville de Paris_ was still afloat and loomed lofty and almost
uninjured, but a few hours later she filled and sank, carrying eight
hundred men to the bottom with her. Of the merchantmen, not one within
sight of the _Ramillies_ had all her masts standing. They were almost
helpless survivors, still battling for very existence.

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.
After spending all day in pumping and baling until they were ready to
drop in their tracks, the officers, through the captain as spokesman,
suggested to the admiral that some of the guns be thrown overboard in
order to lighten the ship. To this he vigorously objected on the ground
that a man-of-war was a sorry jest without her battery, but they argued
that a man-of-war in Davy Jones’ locker was of no use at all, wherefore
the admiral consented to heaving over the lighter guns and some of the
shot.

After another night of distress and increasing peril, the officers
raised the question again, and

the admiral was prevailed upon, by the renewed and pressing
remonstrances, to let six of the forward-most and four of the
aftermost guns of the main deck be thrown overboard, together with
the remainder of those on the quarterdeck; and the ship still
continuing to open very much, he ordered tarred canvas and hides
to be nailed fore and aft from under the sills of the ports on the
main deck under the fifth plank above, or within the waterways, and
the crew, without orders did the same on the lower deck.

The ship was sinking in spite of these endeavors, and the admiral now
let them throw all the guns over, which grieved him very much, “and
there being eight feet of water in the magazine, every gentleman was
compelled to take his turn at the whips or in handling the buckets.”

These six hundred British seamen and officers were making a very
gallant effort of it, and infusing them with his ardent spirit was
the cheery, resourceful Admiral Graves, whose chief virtue was never
to know when he was whipped. Under his direction the ship was now
_frapped_, and if you would know how ancient was this method of trying
to save a ship in the last extremity, please turn to St. Paul’s story
of his own shipwreck and read as follows:

And when the ship was caught and could not bear up into the wind,
we let her drive. And running under a certain island which is
called Clauda, we had much work to come by the boat;

Which when they had taken up, they used helps, under-girdling the
ship; and fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands, strake
sail and so were driven.

The souls of the jolly, jolly mariners in Kipling’s “Last Chantey,”
plucking at their harps and they plucked unhandily, listened with
professional approval when the stout Apostle Paul lifted his voice in
turn and sang to them:

Once we frapped a ship, and she labored woundily,
There were fourteen score of these,
And they blessed Thee on their knees,
When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under
Malta by the sea!

And so the _Ramillies_ was frapped, or under-girdled by passing hempen
hawsers under her keel and around the straining hull to hold her
timbers together before she literally fell apart. It was a fine feat of
seamanship, but unavailing. The admiral had nothing more to say about
the crime of tossing overboard his Majesty’s valuable guns, munitions,
and stores, and the crew fairly gutted the ship of everything weighty,
including both bower anchors. As the day wore on toward nightfall,
about twenty other ships were still visible, and the officers urged the
admiral to shift his pennant to one of them and so save himself; but

this he positively refused to do, deeming it, as he declared,
unpardonable of a commander-in-chief to desert his garrison in
distress; that his living a few years longer was of very little
consequence, but that, by leaving his ship at such a time, he
should discourage and slacken the exertions of the people by
setting them a very bad example.

When evening came, the spirits of the people began to fail, and
they openly expressed the utmost despair, together with the most
earnest desire of quitting the ship lest they should founder in
her. The admiral hereupon advanced and told them that he and
their officers had an equal regard for their own lives, that the
officers had no intention of deserting either them or the ship,
that, for his part, he was determined to try one more night in her;
he therefore hoped and intreated they would do so too, for there
was still room to imagine that one fair day, with a moderate sea,
might enable them by united exertion to clear and secure the well
against the incroaching ballast which washed into it; that if this
could be done they might be able to restore the chains to the pumps
and use them; and that then hands enough might be spared to raise
jury-masts with which they might carry the ship to Ireland; that
her appearance alone, while she could swim, would be sufficient
to protect the remaining part of her convoy; above all, that as
everything that could be thought of had now been done for her
relief, it would be but reasonable to wait the effect.

This temperate speech had the desired result. The firmness
and confidence with which he spoke, and their reliance on his
seamanship and judgment, as well as his constant presence and
attention to every accident, had a wonderful effect upon them.
Since the first disaster, the admiral had, in fact, scarcely ever
quitted the deck. This they had all observed, together with his
diligence in personally inspecting every circumstance of distress.

This simple picture of him portrays a fine figure of a man, of the
sort who have created and fostered the spirit and traditions both of
the British and the American naval services. In a sinking ship which
had lost all her guns, he was still mindful of his duty of guarding
the merchant convoy, or what was left of it, against any roving French
or Spanish war vessels or privateers, and every fiber of him rebelled
against deserting his ship as long as her flag flew above water. He was
a brother of the sea to Admiral Duncan who, as Stevenson describes it,

lying off the Texel with his own flagship, the _Venerable_, heard
that the whole Dutch fleet was putting to sea. He told Captain
Hotham to anchor alongside of him in the narrowest part of the
channel and fight his vessel until she sank. “I have taken the
depth of the water,” added he, “and when the _Venerable_ goes down,
my flag will still fly.” And you observe this is no naked Viking
in a prehistoric period; but a Scotch member of Parliament, with
a smattering of the classics, a telescope, a cocked hat of great
size, and flannel underclothing.

At three o’clock in the morning of the next night the pumps of the
_Ramillies_ were found to be hopelessly out of commission, the water
was rushing into the gaping wounds made by the sea, and it seemed as
though the timbers were pulling asunder from stern to bow. Sadly the
admiral admitted that the game was lost, and he told his captain to
abandon ship at daybreak, but there was to be no wild scramble for
the boats. The crew was to be informed that the sick and disabled were
to be removed, and that all the merchant vessels would be ordered to
send boats for this purpose. Confidentially, however, the officers were
instructed to fetch ample stores of bread, beef, pork, and flour to the
quarterdeck and to arrange for distributing the crew among the boats
that were to be called away from the other ships. Such boats of the
_Ramillies_ as had not been smashed by the storm were to be ready to
launch, and every officer would be held responsible for the men in his
own division. As soon as the invalids were safely out of the ship, the
whole crew would be embarked in an orderly and deliberate manner.

Accordingly at dawn, the signal was made for the boats of the
merchantmen, but nobody suspected what was to follow until the
bread was entirely removed and the sick gone. About six o’clock the
rest of the crew were permitted to go off, and between nine and
ten, there being nothing farther to direct or regulate, the admiral
himself, after shaking hands with every officer, and leaving his
barge for their better accommodation and transport, quitted forever
the _Ramillies_ which had then nine feet of water in her hold.
He went into a small leaky boat, loaded with bread, out of which
both himself and the surgeon who accompanied him had to bale the
water all the way. He was in his boots, with his surtout over his
uniform, and his countenance as calm and composed as ever. He
had, at going off left behind all his stock, wines, furniture,
books, charts, &c. which had cost him upwards of one thousand
pounds, being unwilling to employ even a single servant in saving
or packing up what belonged to himself alone, in a time of such
general calamity, or to appear to fare better in that respect than
any of the crew.

The admiral rowed for the _Belle_, Captain Foster, being the first
of the trading vessels that had borne up to the _Ramillies_ the
preceding night, and by his anxious humanity set such an example
to his brother traders as had a powerful influence upon them, an
influence which was generally followed by sixteen other ships.

Two hours after the six hundred men of the _Ramillies_ had been taken
off, the weather, which had moderated, became furious again, and
during a whole week after that it would have been impossible to handle
boats in the wicked seas. Admiral Graves had managed the weather
as handsomely as he did his ship and her men, getting them away at
precisely the right moment and making a record for efficiency and
resolution which must commend itself to every mariner, whether or not
he happens to be a Britisher. On October 10 the _Belle_ safely carried
the admiral into Cork Harbor, where he hoisted his pennant aboard the
frigate _Myrmidon_. The crew reached port in various ships, excepting a
few who were bagged by French privateers which swooped seaward at the
news that the great West India convoy had been dispersed by a storm.

Of the other British men-of-war which went to the bottom, the story of
the _Centaur_ was reported by her commander, Captain Inglefield, who
was one of the thirteen survivors of a crew of more than four hundred
men. Whether or not he should have stayed with his hapless people and
suffered the common fate is a difficult problem for a landsman to
weigh, but the facts speak for themselves, and they afford opportunity
to compare his behavior with that of Admiral Graves of the _Ramillies_.
Tried by an Admiralty court martial, Captain Inglefield was honorably
acquitted of all blame, and his official record is therefore without a
stain.

During the first night of the storm the _Centaur_ was thrown on her
beam-ends, and was to all appearances a capsized ship. The masts were
cut away, and she righted suddenly. Three guns broke adrift on the
main-deck, and the heavy round shot spilled out of the smashed lockers.
There was a devil’s game of bowls below, with these ponderous objects
madly charging to and fro to the violent motion of the ship, such a
scene as Victor Hugo painted in a famous chapter of his “Ninety-Three.”
The bluejackets scrambled after these infernal guns, which could be
subdued only by snaring them with ropes and tackles. They destroyed
everything in their path, maiming or slaying the sailors who were not
agile enough to dodge the onslaught, reducing bulkheads, stanchions,
deck-beams to kindling wood; but they were captured after a long
conflict and before they could batter the oaken sides out of the ship.

There was a glimpse of hope in the early morning when the _Ville de
Paris_ was sighted two miles to windward. The storm had subsided, a
sort of breathing-spell between the outbreaks of terrific weather. The
stately three-decker of a Frenchman lifted all her masts against the
foaming sky-line and was even setting a topsail. Plunging her long rows
of painted gun-ports under, she climbed buoyantly to meet the next
gray-backed comber, while the copper glinted almost to her keel as
she wildly rolled and staggered. This captured flag-ship in which De
Grasse, fresh from the triumph of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown,
had confidently expected to crush Rodney and so sweep the seas of the
New World for France, seemed to have been vouchsafed some peculiar
respite by the god of storms. To those who beheld her from the drowning
_Centaur_ the impression conveyed was the same as that reported by
Admiral Graves, that she had miraculously come through unhurt, the only
ship of this great fleet whose lofty spars still stood.

Captain Inglefield began firing guns in token of distress, and the
_Ville de Paris_ bore straight toward him, responding to her helm and
handling like a ship which was under complete control. Two merchant
vessels passed close enough to hail the _Centaur_ and offer help, but
Captain Inglefield waved them on their courses, so confident was he
that the _Ville de Paris_, now flying the ensign of the British navy,
would stand by. Another merchantman passing close aboard, the _Centaur_
asked her to take word to Captain Wilkinson of the _Ville de Paris_
that he was urgently needed. 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.

On board the _Centaur_ they pumped and they baled and gulped down
the stiff rations of grog and hoped to fetch her through, as is the
way of simple sailormen. Captain Inglefield noted that “the people
worked without a murmur and indeed with cheerfulness.” In 1782
men-of-war’s-men were singing Didbin’s hearty sea-songs, which held
sentiment enough to please a mariner’s heart, and possibly the
clattering beat of the chain pumps of the _Centaur_ were timed to the
chorus of “Blow High, Blow Low,” and the gloomy, reeking main-deck
echoed the verses:

“And on that night when all the crew,
The memory of their former lives
O’er flowing cans of flip renew,
And drink their sweethearts and their wives,
I’ll heave a sigh and think on thee:
And, as the ship rolls through the sea,
The burden of my song shall be
Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear
The mainmast by the board.”

The _Centaur_ was left on a lonely sea after the assistance of the
crippled merchantmen had been courteously declined and the _Ville de
Paris_ had so unaccountably sailed past. At night the flashes of guns
were seen, the farewell messages of foundering ships, but through the
long day there was never a sight of a sail. The _Centaur_ settled
deeper and deeper until her lower decks were awash and it was foolish
to pump and bale any longer. What was the use of trying to lift the
Atlantic Ocean out of a ship that refused to stay afloat? It was not so
much the fear of death as the realization of defeat that caused such a
scene as this:

“The people who, till this period, had labored as determined to conquer
their difficulties, without a murmur, or without a tear, seeing their
efforts useless, many of them burst into tears and wept like children.”

There were boats for only a few of the large company, and such rafts
as could be hastily put together would not have survived an hour in
the seas that still ran high and menacing. By way of doing something,
however, the carpenter’s gang swung out some spars and booms and began
to lash them together. Captain Inglefield made mention of the behavior
of the crew in this interesting reference,

Some appeared perfectly resigned, went to their hammocks and
desired their messmates to lash them in; others were securing
themselves to gratings and small rafts; but the most predominant
idea was that of putting on their best and cleanest clothes.

This desire of making a decent appearance when in the presence of death
is curiously frequent in the annals of the sea and may be called a
characteristic trait of the sailor. At random two instances recur to
mind. One of them happened aboard the United States frigate _Essex_
in the War of 1812, when Captain David Porter fought his great fight
against the _Phoebe_ and the _Cherub_ and won glory in defeat. The
decks of the _Essex_ were covered with dead and wounded, and more than
half her crew had fallen when the starry ensign was hauled down. Then,
as one of them told it when he returned home:

“After the engagement, Benjamin Hazen, having dressed himself in a
clean shirt and jerkin, told what messmates of his that were left that
he could never submit to be taken as a prisoner by the English and
leaped into the sea where he was drowned.”

More than a hundred years later, in the Great War against Germany, an
American yacht enrolled in the naval service was hunting submarines and
convoying transports in the Bay of Biscay when a hurricane almost tore
her to pieces. Deck-houses smashed, hold full of water, the yacht was
not expected to survive the night. Then it was that a boatswain’s mate
related:

A guy of my division appeared on deck all dressed up in his liberty
blues. The bos’n’s-mate asked him what he meant by turning out all
dolled up like that. “Why, Jack,” answered this cheerful gob, “I
have a date with a mermaid in Davy Jones’ locker.”

Captain Inglefield of the _Centaur_ was about to make one of those
momentous decisions which now and then confront a man as he stands at
the crossroads of destiny. When he prepared his own case and submitted
his defense, in the narrative written after his return to England, he
stated it with a certain unconscious art which deserves to be quoted as
follows:

As evening approached, the ship seemed little more than suspended
in the water. There was no certainty that she would swim from one
minute to another; and the love of life, now began to level all
distinctions. It was impossible, indeed, for any man to deceive
himself with the hopes of being saved on a raft on such a sea;
besides, it was probable that the ship in sinking would carry
everything down with her in a vortex.

It was near five o’clock, when coming from my cabin, I observed a
number of people gazing very anxiously over the side; and looking
myself, I saw that several men had forced the pinnace and that more
were attempting to get in. I had thoughts of securing this boat
before she might be sunk by numbers; there appeared not a moment
for consideration; to remain and perish with the ship’s company to
whom I could no longer be of any use, or seize the opportunity,
which seemed the only one of escaping and leave the people with
whom, on a variety of occasions I had been so well satisfied that I
thought I could give my life to preserve them. This was, indeed, a
painful conflict and of which, I believe, no man could form a just
idea who had not been placed in a similar situation.

The love of life prevailed. I called to Mr. Rainey, the master,
the only officer on deck, and desired him to follow me and we
immediately descended into the boat by the after part of the
chains. But it was not without great difficulty that we got her
clear of the ship, twice the number that she could carry pushing
in, and many leaping into the water. Mr. Baylis, a young gentleman
of fifteen years of age, leaped from the chains after the boat had
got off and was taken in.

Yes, the love of life had prevailed with Captain Inglefield of the
_Centaur_, and, no matter how painful his moral conflict, it is obvious
that his departure was attended with a kind of skulking ignominy. He
ran away from his comrades to save his own skin and left them in the
lurch. This is quixotic, perhaps, but are not all questions of honor
more or less irrational? The captain’s narrative makes no farther
mention of the sinking _Centaur_. At five o’clock of a September
afternoon in the North Atlantic, two hours of daylight remained even
in thick and cloudy weather. The four hundred men aboard the ship
could watch the pinnace as she scudded before the wind with a blanket
stretched for a sail and her course laid for the Azores. I imagine they
damned the soul of their captain in curses that were wrenched from the
bottom of their hearts instead of extenuating his conduct and wishing
him luck. And presumably Captain Inglefield turned to gaze at the
foundering man-of-war with her people clustered on deck or busied with
the pitifully futile rafts. Nobody knows how much longer the _Centaur_
floated. The time must have been mercifully brief. When she went under,
every man on board was drowned.

The captain expected sympathy, and you may offer him as much as you
like when he relates of his voyage in the small boat:

It was then that I became sensible how little, if anything, our
condition was better than that of those who remained in the ship.
At least, it seemed to be only the prolongation of a miserable
existence. We were altogether twelve in number, in a leaky boat,
with one of the gunwales stove, in nearly the middle of the Western
Ocean, without compass, quadrant, or sail; wanting great coat or
cloak, all very thinly clothed, in a gale of wind and with a great
sea running.... On examining what means we had of subsistence, I
found a bag of bread, a small ham, a single piece of pork, two
quart bottles of water, and a few French cordials.

They were thirteen days adrift and suffered exceedingly, but only one
man died of hunger and cold, and the others recovered their strength
in the hospitable port of Fayal. These were the captain, the master, a
young midshipman, a surgeon’s mate, a coxswain, a quartermaster, and
five seamen.

CHAPTER XV

THE BRISK YARN OF THE _SPEEDWELL_ PRIVATEER

Captain George Shelvocke was one of many seamen adventurers unknown to
fame who sought a quick and bloody road to fortune by laying violent
hands on the golden ingots in the Spanish galleons of Mexico and Peru.
A state of war made this a lawful pastime for lawless men, and such
were those that sailed from Plymouth on February 13, 1720, in the
little armed ship _Speedwell_, bound out from England to South America
with a privateering commission. She was of two hundred tons burden, and
there could have been no room to swing a cat by the tail, what with
eighteen six-pounders mounted between-decks, a fourteen-oar launch
stowed beneath the hatches, provisions for a long voyage, and a crew of
a hundred men. Most of these were landlubbers, wastrels of the taverns
and the waterside, who were so terrified by the first gale of wind that
seventy of them “were resolved on bearing away for England to make a
complaint against the ship. They alleged that she was so very crank
that she would never be able to encounter a voyage to the South Seas.”

The fact that the seventy objectors were unanimously seasick delayed
the mutiny; besides which, Captain Shelvocke talked to them, and he
was a persuasive man whenever he used a pair of flint-lock pistols to
make his meaning clear. With calmer weather the seventy recalcitrants
plucked up spirit to renew the argument, and went so far as to seize
the helm and trim the yards on a course toward England. The captain was
now seriously vexed. With a dozen officers behind him, he overruled
the majority, tied two of them in the rigging, and ordered them
handsomely flogged, and consented to forgive the others on promise of
good behavior. “Nevertheless,” remarks a commentator, “it occasioned
him great uneasiness to find himself with a ship’s company likely to
occasion such trouble and vexation.”

The _Speedwell_ almost foundered before she was a fortnight at sea, the
pumps going, crew praying, and some of her provisions and gunpowder
spoiled by salt water; but Captain George Shelvocke shoved her along
for the South Sea, half a world away, and set it down as all in the
day’s work. Seafaring in the early eighteenth century was not a
vocation for children or weaklings.

Seeking harbor on the coast of Brazil to obtain wood and water, the
_Speedwell_ fell in with a French man-of-war whose commander and
officers were invited aboard the privateer for dinner. The crew was
inconsiderate enough to touch off another mutiny, which interrupted
the pleasant party; but the French guests gallantly sailed into the
ruction, and their swords assisted in restoring order, after which
dinner was finished. Captain Shelvocke apologized for the behavior
of his crew, and explained that “it was the source of melancholy
reflection that he, who had been an officer thirty years in the service
should now be continually harassed by the mutiny of turbulent people.”
Most of them were for deserting, but he rounded them up ashore and
clubbed them into the boats, and the _Speedwell_ sailed to dare the
Cape Horn passage.

[Illustration: THE BRIG “OLINDA” OF SALEM, BUILT IN 1825

From the original by François Roux of Marseilles, in the Marine Room,
Peabody Museum, Salem]

For two long months she was beating off Terra del Fuego and fighting
her way into the Pacific, spars and rigging sheathed in ice, the
landlubbers benumbed and useless, decks swept by the Cape Horn combers;
but Captain George Shelvocke had never a thought in his head of putting
back and quitting the golden adventure. He finally made the coast of
Chile, at the island of Chiloé, and when the Spanish governor of the
little settlement refused to sell him provisions, he went ashore and
took them. All was fair in the enemy’s waters, and the _Speedwell_
began to look for ships to plunder. He snapped up two small ones, and
then captured the _Saint Firmin_, a three-hundred-ton merchant vessel
with a valuable cargo. A flag of truce came out from the nearest port
with proposals of ransom, and a Jesuit priest, as a messenger, begged
the captain to restore to him ten great silver candlesticks which had
been left as a legacy to the convent. The bargaining came to naught,
and the booty was sold to the crew at an auction “before the mast,”
after which the ship was burned.

The _Speedwell_ next captured the town of Payta and put the torch to
it after the governor had refused to contribute ten thousand pieces of
eight. While the crew was ashore, a heavily armed ship came sailing
in, and the flag at her yard proclaimed that a Spanish admiral was
in command. In the privateer were left only the sailing-master, Mr.
Coldsea, and nine men; but they served the guns with so much energy
that the admiral cleared for action and reckoned he had met up with a
tough antagonist. While they were banging away at each other, Captain
Shelvocke was hustling his men into the boats and pulling off from
shore; but before they had reached their own ship, the Spanish admiral
had ranged within pistol-shot and was letting go his broadside. The
situation was ticklish in the extreme, but the narrative explains it
quite calmly:

Captain Shelvocke then cut his cable, when the ship falling the
wrong way, he could just clear the admiral; but there was a great
damp cast on the spirits of his people, at seeing a ship mounting
fifty-six guns, with four hundred and twenty men, opposed to the
_Speedwell_ which had only twenty then mounted, with seventy-three
white men and eleven negroes. Some of them in coming off, were for
leaping into the water and swimming ashore, which one actually did.

Drifting under the admiral’s lee, the _Speedwell_ was becalmed for
an hour, while the powder-smoke obscured them both, the guns flamed,
and the round shot splintered the oak timbers. Captain Shelvocke’s
ensign was shot away, and the Spanish sailors swarmed upon their high
forecastle and cheered as they made ready to board; but another British
ensign soared aloft, and then a breeze drew the privateer clear, and
she bore for the open sea. Her rigging was mostly shot away, there
was a cannon-ball in the mainmast, the stern had been shattered, guns
were dismounted, and the launch had been blown to match-wood by the
explosion of a pile of powder-bags; but she clapped on sail somehow and
ran away from the Spanish flag-ship, which came lumbering out after
her.

The _Speedwell_ was chased next day by another man-of-war, but dodged
after nightfall by means of the expedient of setting a lighted lantern
adrift in a tub and so deluding the enemy. It was the sensible
conclusion of Captain Shelvocke that there might be better hunting
on the coast of Mexico. South American waters seemed to be rather
uncomfortable for gentlemen adventurers.

The privateer stood away for the island of Juan Fernandez to refit
and rest her crew. They needed a respite by the time the island was
sighted, for they were six weeks on the way, and the ship sprang a leak
where a Spanish shot had lodged in her bow, and they pumped until they
dropped in their tracks. Eleven years earlier Alexander Selkirk, who
was the real Robinson Crusoe, had been rescued from his solitary exile
on Juan Fernandez, where Captain Dampier’s expedition had marooned him.
With his garden and his flock of wild goats and his Holy Bible he had
passed four years of an existence so satisfactory

that he scarce ever had a moment hang heavy on his hands; his
nights were untroubled and his days joyous, from the practice of
temperance and exercise. It was his custom to use stated hours
and places for the exercise of devotion which he performed aloud
in order to keep up the faculties of speech.... When his powder
failed, he took the goats by speed of foot, for his way of living
and continual exercise of walking and running cleared him of all
gross humors, so that he ran with wonderful agility, through the
woods and up the rocks and hills.

When he arrived at his full vigor, he could take at full speed the
swiftest goat running up a promontory and never failed catching
them but on a descent.... The precaution he took against want,
in case of sickness and not being able to go abroad, was to lame
kids when very young, so that they might recover their health, but
never be capable of speed. These he kept in great numbers about his
habitation, and taught several of them and his cats, to dance and
sometimes, to divert himself he used to sing and dance with them.
He also diverted himself with contrivances to vary and increase his
stock of tools, and sometimes, in clear evenings, in counting the
stars.

So beneficial were the results that it might have improved the morals
and the manners of Alexander Selkirk’s shipmates if they had been
marooned with him. This was the fate, indeed, which happened to the
crew of the _Speedwell_. While they were filling the water-casks, a
gale drove the ship hard ashore. The disaster came so suddenly that
“their surprise at this unexpected event is not to be described; and
in a very few minutes the ship was full of water and almost everything
destroyed. All the people, however, except one man were saved.”

As was to be expected, Captain George Shelvocke proceeded to make
the best of it. He managed to raft ashore most of the gunpowder,
some bread and beef, the nautical instruments and compasses, and was
careful to see that his precious privateering commission was safely
in his pocket. It will be inferred from this that he had no intention
of letting so small a trifle as a shipwreck interfere with his plans
of disturbing the peace of the viceroys of Spain. A little village
of tents and huts was promptly built near a stream of fresh water,
and when the castaways had sufficiently rested their weary bones,
the captain called them together and announced that they would have
to build a small vessel if they did not wish to spend the rest of
their days on this desolate island. He was not one to be content with
devotional exercises and a household of dancing goats and cats. His
crew replied that they were anxious to build some sort of craft if
he would show them how, and accordingly they pulled the wreck of the
_Speedwell_ apart and piled the timbers on the beach.

Keel-blocks were set up, and they began to put together what they
called a bark. It was to be only forty feet long, with a depth of seven
feet, by no means large enough to hold a hundred men, but material was
difficult to obtain and skilled labor scarce. The armorer directed
the work, being a man of skill and industry; but after two months of
toil the fickle company tired of the job and sought entertainment
in mutiny. Captain Shelvocke was a harsh, masterful person, so a
conspiracy deposed him from the command, and a new set of articles was
drawn up which organized a company of free adventurers who purposed to
do things in their own way. They took possession of the muskets and
pistols and wandered off inland to waste the ammunition in shooting
goats.

The sight of a large Spanish ship in the offing put a check on this
nonsense. If captured, they would certainly be hanged; so they flocked
in to urge Captain Shelvocke to resume the command and prepare a scheme
of defense. As soon as the hostile ship disappeared, however, they were
brewing trouble afresh, one party voting to elect the first lieutenant
as captain, another standing by Captain Shelvocke, and a third, perhaps
a dozen in number, deciding to quit the crew and remain on the island.
This group of deserters drifted away and built a camp of their own and
were a good riddance. The captain got the upper hand of the rest, and
the labor of finishing the tiny bark was taken up again.

When it came to planking the bottom, the only material was what could
be ripped off the deck of the wrecked _Speedwell_. The stuff was so
old and brittle that it split into small pieces, and great pains were
required to fit it to the frames of the bark. Then the seams were
calked as tight as possible, and water poured in to test them. Alas!
there were leaks from stem to stern, and the discouraged seamen swore
to one another that she was no better than a damned sieve. They were
ready to abandon the enterprise, but Captain Shelvocke bullied and
coaxed them into picking up their tools again.

They patched and calked and tinkered until it was agreed that the bark
might possibly be kept afloat. The cooper made wooden buckets enough
for every man to have one to bale with, and one of the ship’s pumps
was mended and fitted into the hold. Two masts were set up and rigged,
canvas patched for sails, and a launching day set to catch the spring
tide of October. Meanwhile the cooper was getting casks ready for
provisions. These consisted of two thousand conger-eels which had been
dried in smoke, seal-oil to fry them in, one cask of beef, five or six
of flour, and half a dozen live hogs.

When they tried to launch the bark, the blocks gave way, and she fell
upon her side and stuck fast. Again the faint-hearted seamen were for
giving up the game as lost, but the competent armorer rigged purchases
and tackles and lifted the craft, and she slid into the water on the
next tide, Captain Shelvocke duly christening her the _Recovery_. For
an anchor and cable they had to use a large stone and a light rope; so
before she could drift ashore they stowed themselves aboard, leaving a
dozen who preferred to live on Juan Fernandez and several negroes who
could shift for themselves. There had been deaths enough to reduce the
number of officers and men to fifty as the complement of the forty-foot
bark, which ran up the British ensign and wallowed out into the wide
Pacific.

It was then found that one pump constantly working would keep the
vessel free. In distributing the provisions, one of the conger eels
was allowed to each man in twenty-four hours, which was cooked on a
fire made in a half tub filled with earth; and the water was sucked
out of a cask by means of a musket barrel. The people on board were
all uncomfortably crowded together and lying on the bundles of
eels, and in this manner was the voyage resumed.

The plans of Captain George Shelvocke were direct and simple--to steer
for the Bay of Concepción as the nearest port, in the hope of capturing
some vessel larger and more comfortable than his own. In a moderate sea
the bark “tumbled prodigiously,” and all hands were very wet because
the only deck above them was a grating covered with a tarpaulin; but
the captain refused to bear away and ease her. At some distance from
the South American coast a large ship was sighted in the moonlight. The
desperate circumstances had worn the line between privateering and
piracy very thin, but in the morning it was discovered that the ship
was Spanish and therefore a proper prize of war. She did not like the
looks of the little bark and its wild crew, and edged away with all
canvas set. Captain Shelvocke crowded the _Recovery_ in chase of her,
and when it fell calm, his men swung at the oars.

The audacious bark had no battery of guns, mind you, for they had been
left behind in the wreck of the _Speedwell_. One small cannon had been
hoisted aboard, but the men were unable to mount it, and were therefore
obliged to let it lie on deck and fire it, jumping clear of the recoil
and hitching it fast with hawsers to prevent it from hopping over the
side. For ammunition they had two round shot, a few chain-bolts and
bolt-heads, the clapper of the _Speedwell’s_ brass bell, and some bags
of stones which had been gathered on the beach. It appeared that they
would have to carry the big Spanish ship by boarding her, if they could
fetch close enough alongside, though they were also in a very bad way
for small arms. A third of the muskets lacked flints, and there were
only three cutlasses in the crew.

Captain Shelvocke ignored these odds, and held on after the ship until
a four-hour chase brought him within a few hundred feet of her, so near
that the Spanish sailors could be heard calling them English dogs and
defying them to come on board. Along with the curses flew a volley of
great and small shot, which killed the _Recovery’s_ gunner and almost
carried away her foremast.

So warm a reception staggered many of Captain Shelvocke’s men and
those who before seemed the most forward now lay upon their oars,
insomuch that he had difficulty to make them keep their way. But
recovering themselves, they rowed up and engaged the enemy until
all their small shot was expended, which done they fell astern to
whittle more leaden slugs.

In this manner they made three attempts, all equally unsuccessful;
and they found it impossible to board the ship, she was so lofty,
especially from the want of pistols and cutlasses which are the
only weapons for close fighting. It was calm the whole night during
which the people of the _Recovery_ were busy making slugs, and
having provided a great quantity against morning, they came to the
desperate resolution of either carrying the ship or of submitting
to her. At daybreak Captain Shelvocke ordered twenty men into the
yawl to lay athwart the ship’s hawse whilst he boarded in the dark.
The people in the boat put off, giving him repeated assurances of
their determination; but just at this very juncture of coming to
action, a breeze sprung up and the ship gained on them. As the
gale freshened, the captain expected the ship would have run him
down, which she could have easily done; however, she bore away,
probably for some port on the coast, Valparaiso or Coquimbo. The
_Recovery_ chased her all that day and the following night, and at
daylight of the succeeding morning saw her close to the land and
she continued her course along shore until out of sight.

With several officers and men wounded, the errant little bark wandered
northward, raiding the coast for provisions and riding out one gale
after another, until another large ship was encountered. This was the
stately merchantman, _St. Francisco Palacio_ of seven hundred tons. By
way of comparison, Captain Shelvocke estimated his bark as measuring
about twenty tons. The _Recovery_ rowed up to her in a calm and fought
her for six hours, when the sea roughened, and there was no hope of
closing in. It was a grievous disappointment, for the _St. Francisco
Palacio_ was so deeply laden with rich merchandise that as she rolled
the water ran through her scuppers across the upper deck, and her poop
towered like a wooden castle.

The second failure to take a prize made the unsteady crew discontented,
and several of them stole the best boat and ran away with it. Mutiny
was forestalled by an encounter with a Spanish vessel called the
_Jesus Maria_ in the roadstead of Pisco. Preparations were made to
carry her by storm, as Captain Shelvocke concluded that she would suit
his requirements very nicely and his bark was unfit to keep the sea
any longer. The _Recovery_ was jammed alongside after one blast of
scrap-iron and other junk from the prostrate cannon, and the boarders
tumbled over the bulwarks, armed with the three cutlasses and such
muskets as could be fired. The Spanish captain and his officers had
no stomach to resist such stubborn visitors as these. Doffing their
hats, they bowed low and asked for quarter, which Captain Shelvocke was
graciously pleased to grant. The _Jesus Maria_ was found to be laden
with pitch, tar, copper, and plank, and her captain offered to ransom
her for sixteen thousand dollars.

Captain Shelvocke needed the ship more than he did the money, so
he transferred his crew to the stout _Jesus Maria_ and bundled the
Spaniards into the _Recovery_ and wished them the best of luck.
The shipwreck at Juan Fernandez and all the other misfortunes were
forgotten. The adventurers were in as good a ship as the lost
_Speedwell_ and needed only more guns to make a first-class fighting
privateer of her. They now carried out the original intention of
cruising to Mexico, and in those waters captured a larger ship, the
_Sacra Familia_ of six guns and seventy men. Again Captain Shelvocke
shifted his flag and left the _Jesus Maria_ to his prisoners. On board
of his next capture, the _Holy Sacrament_, he placed a prize crew, but
the Spanish sailors rose and killed all the Englishmen, and the number
of those who had sailed from England in the _Speedwell_ was now reduced
to twenty-six.

Off the coast of California sickness raged among them until only six or
seven sailors were fit for duty. Then Captain Shelvocke did the boldest
thing of his career, sailing the _Holy Sacrament_ all the way across
the Pacific until he reached the China coast and found refuge in the
harbor of Macao. Then this short-handed crew worked the battered ship
to Canton, where the captains of the East Indiamen expressed their
amazement at the ragged sails, the feeble, sea-worn men, and the voyage
they had made. Captain George Shelvocke by this feat alone enrolled
himself among the great navigators of the eighteenth century. He had
found no Spanish galleons to plunder, and his adventure was a failure,
but as a master of men and circumstances he had won a singular success.

He saw that his few men were safely embarked in an East Indiaman bound
to London, and after a vacation in Canton he, too, went home as a
passenger, completing a journey around the globe. Three and a half
years had passed since he sailed from Plymouth in the _Speedwell_ with
a mutinous crew of landlubbers and high hopes of glittering fortune.
Almost every officer had died, including the sailing-master, the
first lieutenant, the gunner, the armorer, and the carpenter, and
of the original company, a hundred strong, no more than a dozen saw
England again. Nothing more is known of the seafaring career of Captain
Shelvocke, but he was no man to idle on a quay or loaf in a tap-room,
and it is safe to say that he lived other stories that would be vastly
entertaining.

CHAPTER XVI

LUCKLESS SEAMEN LONG IN EXILE

_Robinson Crusoe_ recoiling from the discovery of the footprint in
the sand is what Stevenson calls one of the epoch-making scenes in
all romantic literature, to be compared with Achilles shouting over
against the Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, and _Christian_
running with his fingers in his ears. There is, nevertheless, among
the true stories of seafaring adventure at least one scene which is
not unworthy of mention in the same breath with the culminating moment
of _Robinson Crusoe_. This occurred when Peter Serrano encountered the
other castaway on a desert island off the coast of Chile.

It was in the early days of Spanish exploration and settlement on the
South American coasts when this sailor, Peter Serrano, was wrecked,
and saved himself by swimming ashore while the rest of the crew were
drowned. He crawled out upon an island so dismally barren that it had
neither water, wood, nor grass, and not a bit of wreckage was washed
ashore with him, no provisions, no timbers with which to build a boat.
In short, Peter Serrano had absolutely none of the resources of the
shipwrecks of fiction.

When the huge sea turtles crawled up on the sand he threw them over
upon their backs and cut their throats with his sheath-knife. The
blood he drank, and the flesh was eaten raw or dried in the blazing
sun. Other distressed mariners have thanked God for this same food,
and it may explain to the landsman why a ship is said to “turn turtle”
when she capsizes. Peter Serrano, who was cast ashore with only his
ready wits and his sheath-knife, scraped out the shells of these great
turtles and used them to catch water when the heavy rains fell. He
was therefore provided with food and drink, and shelter was the next
essential.

There were fragments of plank from ships which had been lost among
these shoals, but they were small and rotten and good for nothing but
fire-wood. Peter made himself a little roof of turtle-shells large
enough to crawl under, but the heat of the sun so tormented him that he
had to take a cool dip in the salt water several times a day. However,
he had organized himself for the struggle for existence and was now
determined to find some method of making fire. How he succeeded was
described by his biographer, Garcilasso de la Vega, and translated
into English a hundred and fifty years ago.

Considering on this invention, (for seamen are much more ingenious
in all times of extremity than men bred at land) he searched
everywhere to find out a couple of hard pebbles, instead of flints,
his knife serving in the place of a steel. But the island being
covered all over with a dead sand and no stone appearing, he swam
into the sea and diving often to the bottom he at length found a
couple of stones fit for his purpose which he rubbed together until
he got them to an edge, with which being able to strike fire, he
drew some threads out of his shirt which he worked so small that it
was like cotton, and served for tinder. So that having contrived
a means to kindle fire, he gathered a great quantity of sea-weeds
thrown up by the waves which, with the shells of fish and the
splinters of old ships afforded nourishment for his fuel. And lest
sudden showers should extinguish his fire he made a little covering
for it, like a small hut, with the shells of the largest turtles,
taking great care that his fire should not go out.

Peter Serrano lived alone for three years in this condition and saw
several ships pass the island, but none turned in to investigate his
signal smoke. It is easy to fancy that “being exposed to all weathers,
the hair of his body grew in that manner that he was covered all over
with bristles, and the hair of his head and beard reaching to his waist
he appeared like some wild savage creature.”

Now for the scene which is extraordinary for its elements of romantic
climax. Poor Peter Serrano did not know it, but he was living
literature as defined by the masters. It is quaintly told in the
original narrative and needs no embroidery of comment.

At the end of three years, Serrano was strangely surprised with
the appearance of a man in his island, whose ship had, the night
before, been cast away upon those sands, and who had saved himself
on a plank of the vessel. As soon as it was day he espied the smoke
and imagining whence it was, he made towards it.

As soon as they saw each other, it is hard to say which was the
more amazed. Serrano imagined that it was the devil who had come in
the shape of a man to tempt him to despair. The new-comer believed
Serrano to be the devil in his own proper shape and figure, being
covered all over with hair and beard. In fine, they were both
afraid, flying one from the other. Peter Serrano cried out as he
ran:

“Jesus, Jesus, deliver me from the devil.”

The other hearing this, took courage and returning again to him,
called out:

“Brother, brother, do not fly from me, for I am a Christian, as
thou art.”

And because he saw that Serrano still ran from him, he repeated
the Credo or Apostles’ Creed in words aloud, which, when Serrano
heard, he knew it was no devil that would recite those words, and
thereupon gave a stop to his flight, and returning with great
kindness they embraced each other with sighs and tears, lamenting
their sad state, without any hopes of deliverance. Serrano,
supposing that his guest wanted refreshment, entertained him with
such provisions as his miserable life afforded, and having a little
comforted each other they began to recount the manner and occasion
of their sad disasters.

For the better government of their way of living, they designed
their hours of day and night to certain services; such a time was
appointed to kill fish for eating, such hours for gathering weeds,
fish-bones, and other matters which the sea threw up, to maintain
their constant fire. And especial care had they to observe their
watches and relieve each other at certain hours, that so they might
be sure their fire went not out.

In this manner they lived amiably together for certain days, but
many days did not pass before a quarrel arose between them so
high that they were ready to fight. The occasion proceeded from
some words that one gave the other, hinting that he took not that
care and labor as the extremity of their condition required. This
difference so increased, (for to such misery do our passions often
betray us) that at length they separated and lived apart one from
the other.

However, in a short time having experienced the want of that
comfort which mutual society procures, their choler was appeased
and they returned to enjoy converse, and the assistance which
friendship and company afforded, in which condition they passed
_four years_. During this time they saw many ships sail near them,
yet none would be so charitable or curious as to be invited by
their smoke and flame. So that being now almost desperate, they
expected no other remedy besides death to put an end to their
miseries.

However, at length a ship venturing to pass nearer than ordinary,
espied the smoke, and rightly judging that it must be made by
some shipwrecked persons escaped to those sands, hoisted out their
boat to take them in. Serrano and his companion readily ran to the
place where they saw the boat coming, but as soon as the mariners
approached so near as to distinguish the strange figures and looks
of these two men, they were so affrighted that they began to row
back.

But the poor men cried out and that they might believe them not
to be devils or evil spirits, they rehearsed the creed and called
aloud the name of Jesus, with which words the mariners returned,
took them into the boat and carried them to the ship, to the great
wonder of all present, who with admiration beheld their hairy
shapes, not like men but beasts, and with singular pleasure heard
them relate the story of their past misfortunes.

The companion died in his voyage to Spain, but Serrano lived to
come thither, from whence he travelled into Germany where the
Emperor, Charles V, then resided: all which time he nourished his
hair and beard to serve as an evidence and proof of his past life.
Wheresoever he came the people pressed, as to a sight, to see him
for money. Persons of quality, having the same curiosity, gave him
sufficient to defray his charges, and his Imperial Majesty, having
seen him and heard his discourses, bestowed a rent upon him of four
thousand pieces of eight a year, which make forty-eight hundred
ducats in Peru. Alas, while going to take possession of this
income, Peter Serrano died at Panama and had no farther enjoyment
of it.

This Spanish sailor of long ago deserved to enjoy those golden ducats,
and it was a most unkindly twist of fate that snuffed his candle out.
He was more fortunate, however, than most shipwrecked seamen, who have
been thankful to find a shirt to their backs and the chance to sign on
for another voyage when they set foot in port again. Seven years on
a desert island was a long, long exile for Peter Serrano, but he saw
home much sooner than the luckless Dutchmen of the _Sparrow-hawk_ who
were cast away on an island off the coast of Korea in the year of 1653.
Twelve years later a few survivors gazed once more on the quays and
docks of Amsterdam, but meanwhile they were making history.

These were the first men who ever carried to Europe a description of
the hermit kingdom of Korea and its queer, slipshod people in dirty
white clothes, a nation sealed up as tight as a bottle which had
drowsed unchanged through a thousand years. Japan was not wholly barred
to foreigners even then, for the Dutch East India Company was permitted
to send two ships a year to Nagasaki and to maintain a trading post in
that harbor. It was a privilege denied all other nations, and for two
centuries the Dutch enjoyed this singular commercial monopoly.

The Koreans, however, refused to have any intercourse with the European
world, and seamen wrecked on that coast were compelled to spend the
rest of their lives there as slaves and captives. This was why the
story told by Henry Hamel, the purser of the _Sparrow-hawk_, aroused
such a vast amount of interest when he reappeared with seven shipmates
after escaping to Japan.

The vessel flew the flag of the Dutch East India Company, and sailed
from Batavia with a crew of sixty-four men, under orders to drop a new
Dutch governor at the island of Formosa. This castellated ark of a
seventeenth-century merchantman safely completed this leg of her voyage
and was then sent to Japan to pick up a cargo of copper, silk, camphor,
porcelain, and bronze. The winds drove the _Sparrow-hawk_ to and fro,
and for a fortnight she still bobbled and rolled within sight of
Formosa. Then came a tempest which made a wreck of her, and she piled
upon the rocks of the Korean island of Quelpert.

The governor promptly sent soldiers to make prisoners of the
thirty-four Dutchmen, who were treated with unexpected kindness. The
purser, the pilot, and the surgeon’s mate were given an audience by
this island ruler, and the scene included a romantic surprise.

Seated beside the Korean governor of this strange, unknown island was
a man of a florid complexion who wore a great red beard. The castaways
stared at him and declared that he was a Dutchman, which the governor
jestingly denied; but presently the red-bearded one broke his silence,
and the tears ran down his cheeks while he told them that his name was
Jan Wettevri of the town of Zyp, Holland.

He had been wrecked on the Korean coast in a Dutch frigate in the year
of 1626, when he was a young man of thirty-one, and his age was now
fifty-eight. Twenty-seven years had he been held in Korea, and no word
respecting the fate of his ship had ever gone back to Holland. Two
shipmates had been saved with him, Theodore Gerard and Jan Pieters, but
they were long since dead. Both had been killed seventeen years before
this while fighting in the Korean army against a Tartar invasion.

Often had he besought the King of Korea, sighed this red-bearded
sailor, Jan Wettevri, that he might go to Japan and join his countrymen
at Nagasaki,

but all the answer he could get from that prince was an assurance
that he should never go excepting he had wings to fly thither; that
it was the custom of the country to detain all strangers, but not
to suffer them to want anything and that they would be supplied
with clothing and food during their lives.

Jan Wettevri found difficulty in speaking his own tongue when he
attempted to tell his story to these seamen of the _Sparrow-hawk_, for
in seventeen years he had heard no other language than Korean.

The friendly governor of Quelpert was succeeded by an unpleasant old
tyrant who made life so uncomfortable that the stubborn Dutchmen
resolved to escape to Japan, sink or swim. The pilot and six sailors
stole a junk, but luck was against them. The rotten mast went over the
side as they were sailing out to sea, and so they were carried back for
punishment. Their hands were tied to a heavy log of wood, and they had
to lie in a row flat upon their stomachs while a sturdy Korean jailer
flailed them with a heavy cudgel, twenty-five blows each upon that part
of a Dutchman’s back where his baggy breeches were the most voluminous.
So cruel was this chastisement that several of them lay a month in bed.

So long as they were content to submit to circumstances, the Koreans
were inclined to treat them with a certain good humor and toleration.
After several months they were conveyed to the mainland and lodged in
the capital city, where the king had his palace. He enrolled them in
his body-guard, and they received wages of seventy measures of rice
per month. Armed with muskets, they drilled under the command of Jan
Wettevri. Henry Hamel, the purser, relates:

Curiosity induced most of the great men belonging to the court to
invite them to dinner, that they might enjoy the satisfaction of
seeing them perform the military exercises and dance in the Dutch
manner. The women and children were still more impatient to see
them, a report having been propagated that they were monsters of
deformity and that in order to drink they were obliged to fasten
their noses behind their ears. Their astonishment, however, was so
much the greater when they saw that they were handsomer and much
more stalwart than the natives of the country. The whiteness of
their complexion was particularly admired. The crowds that flocked
about them were so great that during the first days they could
scarcely pass through the streets or enjoy a moment’s rest in their
huts. At length, the general was obliged to check this curiosity
by forbidding any one to approach their lodgings without his
permission.

For some reason the Dutch company of musketeers was mustered out of
this service after a year or so, and they were more or less turned
adrift and scattered, always under the vigilant eyes of provincial
governors or other officials. Sometimes they loafed and again they
worked for their board or begged their way from one village to another,
and were entertained by the peasantry, who never ceased to wonder at
them. Once an ugly-tempered governor refused to give them clothing and
said they might starve for all he cared; but the account was handsomely
squared, for

he held his dignity only four months, and being accused of
having condemned to death several persons of different ranks on
insufficient grounds, he was sentenced by the king to receive
ninety strokes on the shin bones and to be banished for life.

Towards the end of this year a comet appeared. It was followed
by two others which were both seen at once for the space of two
months, one in the southeast and the other in the southwest, but
with their tails opposite to each other. The court was so alarmed
by this phenomenon that the king ordered the guard at all the forts
and over all the ships to be doubled. He likewise directed that
all his fortresses should be well supplied with warlike stores and
provisions and that his troops should be exercised every day. Such
were his apprehensions of being attacked by some neighbor that he
prohibited a fire to be made during the night in any house that
could be perceived from the sea.

The same phenomena had been seen when the Tartars ravaged the
country, and it was recollected that similar signs had been
observed previous to the war carried on by the Japanese against
Korea. The inhabitants never met the Dutch sailors without asking
them what people thought of comets in their country. Comformably
to the idea prevalent in Europe, the Dutch replied that comets
prognosticated some terrible disaster, as pestilence, war, or
famine, and sometimes all three calamities together.

At the end of twelve years of this forlorn exile, eight of the crew of
the _Sparrow-hawk_ succeeded in stealing away from Korea in a staunch
sea-going junk. Eight others of the thirty-six officers and men were
still alive, but they had to be left behind. With some rice, a few
jars of water, and an iron pot, the fugitives sailed the junk to the
coast of Japan, where the fishermen directed them to Nagasaki, where
Dutch ships were at anchor in the bay. The eight Dutchmen who remained
in Korea were never heard of again, nor was any word received of Jan
Wettevri, now seventy years old, and that great red beard well streaked
with gray.

When a sailor kissed his wife or sweetheart good-by in those rude,
adventurous centuries, the voyage was likely to be darkened by these
tragedies of enforced exile, which were ever so much worse than
shipwreck. Quite typical of its era was the fate of the crew of the
English privateer _Inspector_ when foul weather set her ashore near
Tangier in the year of 1746. Incidentally, the narrative of the
experience of these eighty-seven survivors conveys certain vivid
impressions of an Emperor of Morocco, Zin el Abdin, and of his amazing
contempt for the Christian powers of Europe and their supine submission
to his ruthless dictates. This was in accordance with the attitude of
centuries, during which the treatment of foreign envoys in Morocco was
profoundly humiliating, and the gifts they brought were regarded in
the light of tribute. Indeed, it was not until 1900 that the custom
of mounted sultans under umbrellas receiving ambassadors on foot and
bareheaded was abolished.

While from the European point of view the pirates of the Barbary coast
were a bloodthirsty set of robbers, in the eyes of the Moors they were
religious warriors for the faith who had volunteered to punish the
Nazarenes for rejecting Mohammed, and it is difficult to realize the
honor in which their memory is held save by comparison with that of the
Crusaders, in which the positions were exactly reversed. The varying
influences of the different European states could be gaged at first by
the prices they were compelled to pay to ransom their captive subjects
and later by the annual tribute which they were willing to present to
protect their vessels. Some countries continued the payment well into
the nineteenth century, although the slavery of Christians in Morocco
had been abolished by treaty in 1814.

The privateer _Inspector_, commanded by Captain Richard Veale, sailed
from the Downs on a cruise with two hundred and five hands. After
taking two prizes she entered the Strait of Gibraltar, where a brisk
gale of wind opened her seams, and it was a case of founder or run
for the nearest beach. A treaty which had been signed by the Emperor
of Morocco and the British Government inspired the hope of a humane
reception in Tangier. More than a hundred of the privateersmen were
drowned when the _Inspector_ drove against the rocky coast, and the
rest of them, wounded, half-naked, and exhausted, were discovered by
the Moors, who threw them into a loathsome jail of Tangier.

The British consul, Mr. Pettigrew, arrived from Gibraltar in H. M. S.
_Phoenix_ a few days later, and opened negotiations which resulted in
the release of the captain, his three lieutenants, and the officer of
marines. As for the others, the consul was tartly informed that they
could rot in slavery until the British Government discharged an old
debt claimed by the Emperor of Morocco for captives redeemed seventeen
years before.

While in prison the wretched seamen were left without food for three
days on end, and to their piteous plea the governor of Tangier sent
word:

“If the unbelieving dogs are hungry, let them eat the stones.”

When they desperately attempted to escape, iron chains were locked
about their necks, and twenty of them were thrown into a black hole of
a dungeon where hunger almost drove them to casting lots and eating
one of their number. Two sheep were thrown to them, however, which
they instantly devoured raw. After five months of this existence, in
which they were more dead than alive, an order came to carry them to
Bufcoran, two hundred miles distant, where the emperor was encamped.

This haughty potentate rode out to look them over, and it was his
pleasure that they should be confined in a castle near by. It pleased
them greatly when, after a little while, the same governor of Tangier
who had abused them so frightfully was dragged into the castle, along
with his household of officials, and they wore iron collars locked
about _their_ necks. There was such a thing as righteous retribution
even in those parlous days. The emperor was building a splendid new
castle, and the British privateersmen were set at work with pickaxes
to dig the wall foundations. Remorselessly driven until they dropped,
twenty of them abjured Christianity to find a respite from their
torments.

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 seafaring, 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. One of them described it in these words:

The emperor came to the place where the governor of Tangier and
his miserable companions had lain five days in chains on the bare
ground without the smallest allowance of provisions. Having viewed
these unfortunate wretches, the emperor withdrew about sixty paces
from the castle towards his camp where he gave orders that they
should all be brought out before him. When they were arranged in
the form required, the governor, three sons of the late bashaw,
and another principal inhabitant of Tangier were unchained and set
apart from the rest.

Then with all possible serenity the emperor desired his
armor-bearer to bring him his scimetar. He drew it from the
scabbard with a countenance as composed as if he had been going
to exercise a body of troops. One of the delinquents was next
commanded to be loosened from his chains and brought before him.
The unhappy man, aware of his approaching fate, fell prostrate,
and with tears implored mercy. All entreaties were vain, for the
emperor without regarding them, exclaimed “_In the name of God_,”
and with one blow struck off his head. This done, he returned his
scimetar to the armor-bearer with orders for him and his assistants
to follow the same example and retiring a short way off, stood
to see his orders executed. In this manner were no less than
three hundred and thirty victims massacred to glut his diabolical
vengeance.

The governor of Tangier, the three sons of the late bashaw, and the
other person, who were freed of their chains to be spectators of
the slaughter, were petrified with horror at the sight and full of
apprehension that they were reserved for sufferings more severe. At
length, the emperor approaching them warned them of the spectacle
they beheld, and advised them to take care that his affairs be
properly administered at Tangier in future.

By this means he intended to extort a sum of money from their
friends, but as this did not follow according to his expectations
he summoned them once more before him and gave orders for their
immediate execution. He had previously told them, however, that
having promised they should not die by the sword, they should all
suffer by the bow-string. Hereupon two of his guards were selected
who were employed to strangle them, one after another; which they
did with all imaginable deliberation, in obedience to the orders
of the emperor to take a moderate time in the executions for the
sake of his own enjoyment. And notwithstanding the small number of
victims, it occupied two hours.

[Illustration: TAKING ON THE PILOT IN THE 18TH CENTURY]

The British sailors confessed that such barbarity made them tremble,
and all that sustained their hopes was the rumor of the expected
arrival of an ambassador from England. The consul could do nothing for
them. Mr. Kilbs, the sailing-master of the _Inspector_, fainted at
his work while the emperor was inspecting the building. The despot of
Morocco inquired why the overseers permitted such indolence, but when
the case was explained and he saw that the mariner was in the agonies
of death, he was kind enough to order him carried into the castle,
where he soon expired. In this instance there was no touch of the
whimsical humor displayed when two superannuated Moorish soldiers
toppled over with exhaustion. The emperor cursed them most heartily, at
which the two old men in tremulous accents entreated him to pity their
infirmities and grant them charity during the few years of life left to
them, reminding the emperor of their eighteen years of service in the
army. To this plea their ruler amiably replied that he could perceive
their inability to labor any longer and it was therefore his duty to
protect them against the evils of old age and poverty. He therefore
graciously ordered that they both be shot through the head without more
ado.

After a year of captivity, the sailors were taken to Fez to toil on
another pretentious fortress. Their keepers abused them without mercy,
and a midshipman of the privateer, Mr. Nelson, took his life in his
hands and complained to the emperor. Such boldness won the tyrant’s
favor, and he asked what the grievances were. The midshipman showed a
heavy stick of wood with which one of the keepers had beaten the men of
the _Inspector_ because they sang some songs during the night to keep
their spirits up.

“Fetch me four sticks of that same size, and let them be good ones,”
commanded his Majesty Zin el Adbin. “Also drag that wicked keeper
before me.”

The whole company of British seamen was also ordered into the royal
presence, and four of the most stalwart were selected and told to
take the sticks and break them on the keeper’s bones. The victim was
stretched on the ground, and the incensed mariners flogged him with
great enthusiasm while the emperor encouraged them to make a thorough
job of it or have their own bones broken. The guards carted away what
was left of the keeper, and he died an hour later.

From Fez the captives were carried to Tetuan to await tidings from
the British ambassador to Morocco, who was striving to obtain their
release. At parting with their black overseer, he made the logical
remark:

“Now I have no more to do with you; and if ever you catch me in your
country, I expect no better usage than you have had here.”

The negotiations moved haltingly while the sailors waited in prison in
Tetuan. After a long delay enough money was received from Gibraltar to
redeem twenty-five of them, who were selected by the governor of the
city, “who dismissed them with wishes for a happy voyage.” Three weeks
afterward the balance of the cash came to Tetuan, but the emperor put
a spoke in the wheel by refusing to let the privateersmen go until that
matter of the old debt was canceled. The British ambassador sent a
naval officer to England for more money, and there was another delay,
which annoyed the Moorish governor of Tetuan. A squadron of British
men-of-war, under Commodore Keppel, rode at anchor in the harbor, but
their guns were silent while the ambassador was arrested, his property
seized, and his secretary thrown into a dungeon pit twenty feet deep,
where the playful Moors dropped dead cats and dogs and stones on him.
It could scarcely be said that Britannia rules the waves that washed
the shores of Morocco.

Commodore Keppel pledged his word that the old account should be
squared, although it was well known that the British Government had
already paid it once, and the ambassador gave a promissory note for
the whole amount. Finally the claims were settled to the satisfaction
of the Emperor of Morocco, and the survivors of the privateer were put
aboard H. M. S. _Sea-Horse_. “They ran into the water as deep as the
waist, each thinking himself happiest that he could get in the boat
first.”

Fifty-seven of them had lived to gain their freedom after four years
of slavery. Their sad story ended more happily than might have been
expected, for when they returned to England the king was pleased to
give them a bounty of five pounds each.

The Jews in London supplied them with clothing and showed them
many acts of kindness. Mr. Rich, manager of one of the principal
theatres, presented each man with five pounds and devoted the
proceeds of a night’s performance to their use. The proprietor of
another public exhibition did the like, on which occasion they
appeared in iron chains and collars such as they had worn in
slavery.

The privateersman of the _Inspector_ who wrote the narrative of the
adventures and miseries in Morocco was a hardy salt, if ever there was
one. Unharmed by the experience, this Thomas Troughton lived until
1806, and died at the uncommonly ripe old age of one hundred and
fourteen years.

It seems proper that one of these true tales of luckless seamen long in
exile should have for its hero a mariner of that rugged New England,
the early fortitude and daring of which laid the enduring foundations
of this nation. In the year of 1676 Mr. Ephraim How of New Haven found
it necessary to undertake a journey to Boston. Express-trains were not
then covering the distance between these cities in four hours. In fact,
there were not even post-roads or stage-coaches, and the risk of being
potted by hostile Indians was by no means negligible. To the Pilgrims
and the Puritans of that era the country was still a wilderness almost
as soon as they ventured inland beyond the sound of the sea.

As was common enough, Mr. Ephraim How had a vessel of his own to carry
the cargoes which, as a merchant, he sold to his neighbors of the New
Haven colony. They were a web-footed race of pioneers who traded and
farmed and sailed or fished to earn a thrifty dollar. For his business
trip to Boston Mr. How sensibly went by sea as an easier and quicker
route than by land. With him in his small ketch of seventeen tons went
his two sons as sailors, another youth named Caleb Jones, whose father
was a magistrate in New Haven, a Mr. Augur, who was a passenger, and a
boy, unnamed, who probably cooked the pork and potatoes and scrubbed
the pots in the galley. It was in the month of August, and the ketch
made a pleasant voyage of it around Cape Cod and into Boston Bay.

Illness, contrary winds, and business delays postponed the return
journey until October, and they made sail with every expectation of a
good passage. Off Cape Cod one heavy gale after another drove the ketch
far offshore. The experience must have been terribly severe, for after
eleven days of it the eldest son died, and the other son died soon
after. It was too much for young Caleb Jones also, and he followed the
others over the side, stitched up in a piece of canvas. Poor Ephraim
How had lost his crew as by a visitation of God, and it seems as
though some contagious disease must have ravaged the little ketch. The
passenger, Mr. Augur, was no sailor at all, and Mr. How lashed himself
to the helm for thirty-six hours at a stretch.

In this situation the two men cast lots whether to try to struggle back
to the New England coast or to bear away with the wind and hope to
reach the West Indies. The gambler’s choice decreed New England, but
the weather decided otherwise. For more than two months the distressed
ketch tossed about and drifted, and was beaten to and fro without a
glimpse of landfall. It was late in November when she was wrecked on a
ledge of rock, but Ephraim How had not the slightest idea of where it
was. He later learned that he had driven as far to the eastward as Nova
Scotia, and the ketch had smashed herself upon a desolate island near
Cape Sable. For Ephraim How it was a long, long way from Boston to New
Haven.

Cape Sable in the winter time is even now a wicked refuge for
shipwrecked mariners. Fortunately, there drifted ashore from the ketch
the following list of essentials:

“A cask of gunpowder, which received no damage from the water; a
barrel of wine, half a barrel of molasses, several useful articles
towards building a tent; besides which they had firearms and shot, a
pot for boiling, and most probably other things not mentioned.”

Ephraim How, Mr. Augur, and the cabin boy prepared to make a winter
of it in their flimsy shelter of a canvas tent amid the rocks and
snow-drifts. They shot crows, ravens, and sea-gulls, and warded off
starvation with an uncomplaining heroism which expressed itself in
these words:

“Once they lived five days without any sustenance but did not feel
themselves pinched with hunger at other times, which they esteemed a
special favor of heaven unto them.”

The dear friend and companion, Mr. Augur, died after three months of
this ordeal, and the cabin boy lived until the middle of February.
Thereafter Ephraim How was a solitary castaway. He somehow survived the
winter, and notched a stick to keep the tally of the days and weeks
as they brought the milder airs of spring. Fishing-vessels may have
sighted his signals, but they passed unheeding, afraid of some Indian
stratagem to lure them inshore.

Ephraim How had been three months alone, and seven months on this
island near Cape Sable, when a trading-brig of Salem stood in to
investigate the smoke of his fire, and mercifully rescued him from
exile. On the eighteenth of July, 1677, he arrived in Salem port, and
then made his way home to New Haven. He had been absent a whole year on
that journey to Boston, which the modern traveler makes in a few hours
with magical ease and luxury.

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. No
white men had ever set foot in his island realm until he welcomed
this shipwrecked crew, and the source of his precepts and ideals was
that inner light which had been peculiarly vouchsafed him. Naked and
tattooed, he was not only a noble ruler of his people, but also a very
perfect gentleman.

The packet _Antelope_, in the service of the East India Company, sailed
from Macao in July, 1783, and was driven ashore in a black squall on
one of the Pelew Islands three weeks later. All of the people were
able to get away from the wreck in the boats, but they made for the
beach with the most gloomy forebodings. The Pelews, a westerly group of
the Caroline Islands, in the Pacific, had been sighted by the Spanish
admiral, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, as early as 1543, but no ship had
ever touched there, and the only report, which was gleaned by hearsay
from other islanders, declared that “the natives were unhuman and
savage, that both men and women were entirely naked and fed upon human
flesh, that the inhabitants of the Carolines looked on them with horror
as the enemies of mankind and with whom they held it dangerous to have
any intercourse.”

Captain Henry Wilson of the _Antelope_ was an exceptional commander,
with a reliable crew which cheerfully obeyed him. While the ship was in
the breakers and death seemed imminent, it is recorded that

they endeavored to console and cheer one another and each was
advised to clothe and prepare himself to quit the ship, and
herein the utmost good order and regularity was observed, not a
man offering to take anything but what truly belonged to himself,
nor did any one of them attempt to take a dram or complain of
negligence or misconduct against the watch or any particular person.

A raft was built to carry the stores and supplies, and sent off in
tow of the pinnace and the jolly-boat. The ship was fast grinding to
pieces, but there was no confusion, and the carpenter was so intent on
getting his kit of tools together that he would have been left behind
if the captain had not searched for him. A landing was made in a sandy
cove, and no natives were discovered. Tents were rigged of sail-cloth,
fires built, the arms cleaned and dried, and sentries posted for the
night. One might have supposed that this efficient ship’s company was
in the habit of being shipwrecked.

Two canoes came paddling into the cove next day, and Captain Wilson
went down to meet the islanders. Luckily, he had with him a sailor
named Tom Rose who could talk one or two Malay dialects, and he managed
to struggle along as an interpreter for the reason that a native in one
of the canoes could also speak the Malay tongue.

To questions Tom Rose answered that these were unfortunate Englishmen
who had lost their ship upon the reef and wished to be friends.
Unafraid and cordially disposed, eight islanders left the canoes and
accepted Captain Wilson’s invitation to breakfast. Two of the guests
were found to be brothers of the king. They tasted tea and biscuit for
the first time, and were introduced to the officers, with whom they
shook hands, having quickly noted that this was the accepted manner of
greeting. These Englishmen, mysterious and unknown, were beings from
another world, and the guests displayed lively astonishment, but no
uneasiness.

It was agreed that Mr. Matthias Wilson, the captain’s brother, should
go to the near-by island of Pelew, or Coorooraa, to meet the king in
formal audience and solicit his friendship. One canoe and three men
remained at the sailors’ camp. One of them was the king’s brother, Raa
Kook, commander of the military forces. These islanders were entirely
naked, their brown skins glistening with cocoanut-oil, their long hair
neatly done up in a roll behind.

While Mr. Matthias Wilson was absent on his mission, the crew of the
_Antelope_ went off to the wreck in quest of salvage. It was discovered
that natives had rummaged the cabin and sampled the bottles in the
medicine-chest. Here one begins to discern the ethical code of these
most primitive savages.

Captain Wilson made this transaction known to Raa Kook, not so
much as a matter of complaint as to express to him his uneasiness
for the consequences which might arise to the natives from their
drinking such a variety of medicines. Raa Kook begged that Captain
Wilson would entertain no anxiety whatever on their account;
that if they suffered it would be entirely owing to their own
misconduct, for which he said he felt himself truly concerned.
His countenance fully described the indignation he felt at the
treacherous behavior of his own men and he asked why our people did
not shoot them? He begged that if they or any others should dare
again to attempt to plunder the vessel they would be shot at once
and he should take it upon himself to justify the punishment to the
king.

The only ornament worn by Raa Kook was a polished bracelet of bone,
which he explained to be a mark of high distinction, conferred by
the king upon his own family, officers of state, and military men of
commanding rank. It was readily perceived that such a decoration had
precisely the same significance as the ribbon of the order of the Bath
or the Garter as conferred by English royalty.

All of which is no more extraordinary than the exemplary behavior of
the crew of the _Antelope_. Captain Wilson called his officers together
and suggested that no more liquor be drunk in camp. It made the men
quarrelsome, interfered with their work, and was likely to cause
trouble with the natives. The officers approved, and the boatswain
called all hands next morning to hear the verdict. The seamen agreed to
go without their grog, and offered to go on board the wreck and stave
in every cask of spirits that could be found. This they scrupulously
did, and it is a fair comment that “circumstanced as these poor fellows
were, nothing but a long and well-trained discipline and the real
affection they bore their commander could have produced the fortitude
and firmness which they testified on this occasion.”

After a few days a canoe returned from Pelew Island with a son of
the king as messenger. He brought word that his Majesty Abba Thulle
bade the Englishmen welcome to his country, that they had his full
permission to build a vessel on the island where they then were, or
that they might remove to the island on which he lived and enjoy his
personal protection. Mr. Matthias Wilson would soon return to the camp
and had greatly enjoyed his visit.

When at length the king himself arrived in state to make the
acquaintance of Captain Wilson and his company, he came with squadrons
of canoes filled with armed men who blew sonorous salutes on
conch-shells. Upon a stage in a larger canoe, or royal barge, sat King
Abba Thulle, and the English commander was carried through the surf to
meet him. These were two courtiers, the dignified shipmaster and the
Micronesian savage, and after expressions of mutual esteem the king
explained that this island was held to be sickly and subject to attack
by hostile clans. For this reason he felt anxious for the welfare of
the visitors. Captain Wilson answered that the shore was admirably
suited for building and launching a small vessel and his men were well
drilled and armed. And his surgeon would keep an eye on their health.

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.
Musketry drill and the discharge of the pieces astounded Abba Thulle,
as did also the clothing and implements of these strangers, and the
narrative of the shipwreck sagaciously comments:

The king remained awhile pensive and bewildered, and this
circumstance impressed on every one the idea that there was every
cause to suppose that there had never been a communication between
these people and any other nation, that they and their ancestry
through ages too remote for human conjecture, might have lived as
sovereigns of the world, unconscious that it extended beyond the
horizon which bounded them, unconscious also that there were any
other inhabitants in it than themselves. And in this case, what
might not be the sentiments that burst on a mind thus suddenly
awakened to a new and more enlarged notion of nature and mankind?

King Abba Thulle was not a man to ask for gifts, but was anxious to
bestow favors. He offered to send some of his own craftsmen to help
build a vessel and to provide such native food as might lend variety
to the ship’s stores. One thing only he desired. He was about to wage
war against the rebellious people of an island which had done him
grave injury, and it would be of great advantage if Captain Wilson
would permit four or five of his men to go along with their muskets.
The whole crew volunteered for this sporting adventure, but four young
single men were chosen, with the third mate, Mr. Cummings, in charge.
Wearing blue jackets and cocked hats with light blue cockades, they
sailed blithely away with the army of the king.

Meanwhile the crew had begun work on a small schooner after electing
Captain Wilson as their superior officer, the narrative explaining that
“as every reader may not be acquainted with maritime proceedings, to
such it will not be improper to remark that when a merchant ship is
wrecked all authority immediately ceases, and every individual is at
full liberty to shift for himself.” It was faithfully promised that in
all things the men would obey Captain Wilson as when the _Antelope_ had
been afloat.

The second officer, Mr. Barker, had been a shipwright in his youth,
and he aided the carpenter in laying out the work. The tasks were
methodically distributed, Mr. Matthias Wilson, Surgeon Sharp, and
Captain Wilson sawing down trees, the boatswain in charge of the
blacksmith shop, the gunner acting as chief of police, and a number of
Chinese coolie passengers fetching water, hauling timbers, and running
a laundry. Most of the sailors were employed in the carpenter’s gang. A
stout stockade was built around the little shipyard and two swivel-guns
were mounted against a possible attack from seaward. From the wreck
of the _Antelope_ the boats brought cordage, oakum, iron, and copper,
planking and timbers. It was an orderly bit of Old England transplanted
to the remote and barbarous Pelew Island. And of course Captain Wilson
read prayers to the assembled crew every Sunday evening.

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. The enemy had fled after a spirited
skirmish in which musketry-fire made a complete rout of it. At Pelew
the victors had delayed for feasting and dances, and the English
seamen volunteers seemed highly pleased with the soldier’s life. They
cheerfully set about their allotted tasks in the shipyard, however, and
doffed the blue jackets and cocked hats.

In token of their service, Abba Thulle formally presented to the
English party this island of Oroolong on which they dwelt, and in the
native language it was rechristened “Englishman’s Land.” Captain Wilson
thereupon ran up the British ensign, and three volleys of small arms
were fired. By way of entertainment, one of the king’s brothers came
to spend the night “and brought with him all his spirits and gaiety,
diverting them wonderfully with the pleasant description of the late
engagement and acting with his accustomed humor and gestures the panic
which had seized the enemy the instant they heard the report of the
English guns.”

It was proper that Captain Wilson should journey to the island of
Pelew to return the royal visit, and this was done with becoming
ceremony on both sides, banquets and music, and the attendance of many
chiefs in the thatched village and the unpretentious palace. It was
a smiling landscape, very lush and green, with cultivated fields of
yams and cocoanuts and a contented people. The war with the islanders
of Artingall was unfinished, it seemed, and they deserved severe
chastisement because of several murders committed. Another expedition
was therefore planned, and ten of the British sailors took part with
Captain Wilson’s approval. The details were arranged during this
meeting at Pelew.

A naval action was fought, and the strategy of General Raa Kook was so
brilliant that it deserves mention. The enemy’s squadrons of canoes
held a position close under the land and refused to sail out and join
battle. Raa Kook thereupon detached one of his own squadrons and
concealed it behind a promontory during the night. In the morning the
main fleet of canoes closed in, led by King Abba Thulle, and fought
at long range. Pretending to be thrown into disorder, he ordered the
conch-shells to sound the retreat, and this main fleet fled seaward. In
hot pursuit dashed the squadrons of Artingall. No sooner were they well
clear of the land than Raa Kook told his hidden squadron to advance
and cut the enemy off. The luckless warriors of Artingall were between
the devil and the deep sea, attacked ahead and astern, and mercilessly
bucketed about until they broke and scattered. Many prisoners were
taken, as well as canoes, and this campaign was a closed incident.

The interesting statement is made that Abba Thulle had previously
notified the King of Artingall that in a few days he intended to offer
him battle, and also that it was a maxim of his never to attack an
enemy in the dark or take him unawares. This chivalrous doctrine is not
expounded in detail by the narrator who compiled the personal stories
of Captain Wilson and his officers, but it finds explicit confirmation
in the memoirs of another gallant sailor who visited the Pelew
Islands a few years later. This was Captain Amasa Delano, an American
shipmaster, who also formed a strong friendship with King Abba Thulle
and felt the greatest admiration for him.

Captain Delano was a mariner whose career embraced all the hazards
and vicissitudes that could be encountered in that rugged and heroic
era of endeavor. In Macao he fell in with Commodore John McClure of
the English Navy, who was in command of an expedition setting out to
explore a part of the South Seas, including the Pelew Islands, New
Guinea, New Holland, and the Spice Islands. The Englishman took a fancy
to this resourceful Yankee seaman and offered him the pay and station
of a lieutenant. While the ship tarried at the Pelews, the chronic war
against the rebels of Artingall had flared up again, and Captain Delano
had this to say of Abba Thulle:

The king, according to his usual generosity, had sent word to the
people of Artingall that he should be there in three days for
war. Although I was a Christian and in the habit of assuming the
Christian peoples to be superior to these pagans in the principles
of virtue and benevolence, I could not refrain from remonstrating
with the king. I told him that Christian nations considered it as
within the acknowledged system of lawful and honorable warfare to
use stratagems against enemies and to fall upon them whenever it
was possible and take them by surprise. He replied that war was
horrid enough when pursued in the most open and magnanimous manner,
and that although he thought very highly of the English, still
their principles in this respect did not obtain his approbation and
he believed his own mode of warfare more politic as well as more
just.

He said that if he were to destroy his enemies while they were
asleep, others would have good reason to retaliate the same base
conduct upon his subjects and thus multiply evils, whereas regular
and open warfare might be the means of a speedy peace without
barbarity. Should he subdue his rebellious subjects by strategy
and surprise, they would hate both him and his measures and would
never be faithful and happy although they might fear his power and
unwillingly obey his laws.

Sentiments of this elevated character excited my admiration the
more for this excellent pagan and made an impression upon my mind
which time will never efface. Christians might learn of Abba Thulle
a fair comment upon the best principles of their own religion.

Captain Henry Wilson of the _Antelope_ was therefore not alone in
his high estimate of the character of this island ruler. The English
castaways, industriously framing and planking their trim little
schooner, had many evidences of a sentiment both delicate and noble.
For instance, the royal canoes came bringing many cocoanuts ready for
planting. At the king’s desire they were set out to grow and form a
wall of green around the cove where the camp stood. It was noticed
that while covering each nut with earth, the king’s brothers murmured
certain words. They were dedicatory, it was explained, meaning that
there would be fruit for the captain and his friends whenever they
should return to the island, and should other strangers be wrecked on
this shore, they would thank the English for their refreshment.

The schooner was finished and launched without mishap and christened
the _Ooralong_. The ship’s company had been almost four months on the
island, and were all fit and strong and happy. The anchors, cables, and
other fittings were placed on board, and it remained only to put in the
stores and water-casks. Then it was that King Abba Thulle sent word to
Captain Wilson that he wished to invest him with the order of the bone
bracelet and to knight him as a chief of the highest rank. The ceremony
was impressive, a great concourse of natives attending in profound
silence, and when the bracelet was slipped on the wrist of Captain
Wilson, the king told him that “the emblem should be rubbed bright
every day and preserved as a testimony of the rank he held amongst
them, that this mark of dignity must on every occasion be defended
valiantly, nor suffered to be torn from his arm but with the loss of
life.”

At last the schooner _Ooralong_, taut and seaworthy, swung at anchor
with sails bent and everything ready for the voyage. To the pleasure
and surprise of Captain Wilson, the king announced that he had resolved
to send his second son, Lee Boo, to England if this was agreeable
to the commander. Although his subjects respected his knowledge,
explained Abba Thulle, he felt keenly his own insignificance at seeing
the common English seamen exercise talents so far surpassing him. It
was certain that his son would learn many things which might greatly
benefit his people. And so this young prince of the Pelew Islands
sailed on a marvelous voyage to lands unknown. In one of the farewell
conversations, the king said to Captain Wilson:

I would wish you to inform Lee Boo of all things which he ought
to know and to make him an Englishman. The distress of parting
with my beloved son I have frequently considered. I am well aware
that the distant countries he must pass through, differing much
from his own, may expose him to dangers, as well as to diseases
that are unknown to us here, in consequence of which he may die.
I have prepared my thoughts to this. I know that death is to all
men inevitable, and whether my son meets this event at Pelew or
elsewhere is immaterial. I am satisfied, from what I have observed
of the humanity of your character, that if he is sick you will be
kind to him. And should that fate happen which your utmost care
cannot prevent, let it not hinder you or your brother or your son
or any of your countrymen from returning here. I shall receive you
or any of your people in friendship and rejoice to see you again.

Abba Thulle promised to cherish and preserve a copper plate affixed to
a tree near the cove, upon which was cut the following inscription:

The Honorable
English East India Company’s Ship
The _ANTELOPE_.
HENRY WILSON, Commander,
Was lost upon the reef north of this island
In the night between the 9th and 10th of
August;
Who here built a vessel,
And sailed from hence
The 12th day of November, 1783.

When the little schooner hoisted the union jack and fired a swivel in
token of good-by, the king and his young son came aboard from a canoe,
to be together until the vessel had passed out through the channel of
the reef. A multitude of natives followed in canoes, offering gifts of
fruit and flowers, yams and cocoanuts, which could not be accepted for
lack of space. Gently they were told this, but each held up a little
something, crying: “Only this from me! Only this from me!” Other canoes
were sent ahead to pilot the schooner or to buoy the reef. When it came
time for the king to summon his own canoe he said farewell to his son,
and then embraced Captain Wilson with great tenderness, saying:

“You are happy because you are going home. I am happy to find you are
happy, but still very unhappy myself to see you going away.”

In this manner two rare men saw the last of each other. Captain Henry
Wilson was far too modest to claim credit to himself, but it is quite
obvious that the happy ending of this tragedy of the sea was largely
due to his own serene courage, kindliness, and ability as a seaman and
a commander. An inferior type of man would have made a sorry mess of
the whole affair.

The schooner pluckily made her way through fair weather and foul until
she safely reached the roadstead of Macao. There the little vessel
was found to be so stanch that she was sold for seven hundred Spanish
dollars. Captain Wilson then took passage for England in an East
Indiaman, and the young prince Lee Boo went with him. Arrived home, the
commander made the guest a member of his own household, and sent him
to school at Rotherhite, in London. He was of a bright mind and eager
to learn, and his experiences and impressions make most entertaining
reading.

Alas! he fell ill with small-pox after less than a year of exile from
his distant island, and died in a few days. At the foot of his bed
stood honest Tom Rose, the sailor who had served as an interpreter. At
the sight of his tears, the boyish prince rebuked him, saying,

“Why should he be crying because Lee Boo die?” The doctor who attended
him wrote in a letter to an official of the East India Company:

He expressed all his feelings to me in the most forcible and
pathetic manner, put my head upon his heart, leant his head on my
arm, and explained his uneasiness in breathing. But when I was gone
he complained no more, showing that he complained with a view to be
relieved, not to be pitied. In short, living or dying, he has given
me a lesson which I shall never forget and surely for patience and
fortitude he was an example worthy the imitation of a Stoic.

Thus died a worthy son of his father, the good king Abba Thulle of the
Pelew Islands. Over his grave in England was placed a stone with this
inscription:

To the Memory
of PRINCE LEE BOO,
A native of the Pelew, or Palos Islands,
and Son to Abba Thulle, Rupack or King
of the Island Coorooraa;
Who departed this life on the 27th of December, 1784,
Aged 20 Years.
This Stone is inscribed
by the Honorable United East India Company
as a Testimony of esteem for the humane and kind
Treatment afforded by his Father to the crew of
their ship, the ANTELOPE, Captain WILSON,
which was wrecked off that Island
In the Night of the 9th of August, 1783.

* * * * *

Stop, Reader, stop--let NATURE claim a Tear--A
Prince of Mine, Lee Boo, lies bury’d here.

As a memorial of the _Antelope_ packet and the fortunate sojourn of
her company in the Pelew Islands, a stately volume was prepared at
the direction of the East India Company. This passage is worthy to be
quoted in remembrance of King Abba Thulle:

The night before the schooner sailed, the king asked Captain Wilson
how long it might be before his son’s return to Pelew. Being told
that it would be about thirty moons, or perhaps longer, Abba Thulle
drew from his basket a piece of line and after making thirty knots
in it, a little distance from each other, left a long space and
then adding six other knots carefully put it by.

Thirty months to be counted one by one, and six more in the event
of longer delay before the return of Lee Boo! A hundred and forty
years have gone since the king of the Pelew Islands and Captain Henry
Wilson of the _Antelope_ were brothers in spirit, and the curse of
civilization has long since blighted the manners and the morals of
those simple people of the Pacific; but this story of a shipwreck
survives with a certain noble distinction, and it helps to redeem
the failures of weaker men to play the gallant part amid the cruel
adversities of the sea.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOST SHIPS AND LONELY SEAS ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.