University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
The second cruise of the Viper: she captures the Querida, and the
Intendant's daughter becomes the prize of Captain Hellcat.

This dreadful act of vengeance completed the
subjection of the Bloody Volunteers, who, from that
time forth, gave over all plans and prospects of
escape, and yielded to their fate and the tyrant into
whose hands they had fallen, with a sullen resignation
that showed it was an easy thing even for the
brave and free to stoop to bondage; and a few weeks
more might have seen the Bloody Volunteers, passing
from despair to recklessness, converted into a
set of as thoroughpaced buccaneers and desperadoes as
their comrades. As for me, the case was somewhat
different. My medical office, and perhaps the mean
opinion Brown formed of my courage, prevented
my being ever called upon as a combatant; and
hence I was in little danger of being hardened into
a villain by sights of blood, and by the consciousness
of having shed it. But I was none the less a slave.
The effect of the murder was to increase my fears
of Brown, to rob me of all hope of escaping the
horrible life he had assigned me, and to break down
with a sense of misery and degradation the spirit
which had been once before so nearly broken by
my first oppressor. There was some resemblance,
indeed, between my fate in the Viper and what it

had once been in the Jumping Jenny. The difference
was, that, in the one case, I had been beaten and
tortured in body; while in the other, the scourge of
brutality was applied to my mind. The insults and
menaces of Brown (perhaps it was my prudence
only which saved me from grosser weapons,) were
as painful and killing as ever had been the blows of
Skipper Duck. A few weeks might have seen my
brother volunteers changed into pirates; but I in
that time must have pined away and died of a broken
heart.

The next day, the Viper sailed out of the harbour,
without, however, proceeding far, and took a station
to intercept vessels doubling the west cape of Cuba;
and there she remained cruising four days, during
which two captures were made, one of them a very
valuable one, of vessels from Jamaica: and, in
both instances, their crews were massacred to a
man; for it was a maxim Brown constantly inculcated,
to leave no one to witness against him: “he
had heard of many a free lad of the sea going out of
the world in a hempen horse-collar;” he said, “but, it
had always turned out, they had let some lubber off,
to blab against them.”

Of the particulars of these murderous exploits I
have no heart to speak: they are sickening to my
memory. I have enough, and more than enough,
to relate of atrocities in which my own interests
and history were too deeply involved to be forgotten.

Returning for a day to the harbour to dispose of
the prizes and their cargoes, for which latter, at least,
there seemed to be no want of purchasers among the
honest people on shore, we sailed out again to the
station, to lie in wait for a certain English brig
which Brown in some way got intelligence of, and

which, it was said, would be such a capture as would
make the fortune of every man on board. Upon
the second day of the cruise, she made her appearance,
and efforts were made to approach her; which
was found however to be no easy task, as she immediately
took the alarm, altered her course to the
North, and stood away from us in a style which
proved her to be a very fast sailer. But she was too
valuable a prize to be given up without an effort; and
accordingly the Viper crowded on all sail in pursuit,
which was continued until night, when we lost sight
of her.

But even then the chase was not abandoned; for,
supposing from the relative position of the vessels,
the character of the wind, and other circumstances,
that the brig would change her course again in the
darkness, Brown ordered a similar change in the
course of the Viper, expecting to get sight of the
chase again in the morning.

In this, however, he was disappointed, for when
morning came, the brig was no where to be seen;
but about midday, when we were beginning to retrace
our course to Cuba, the man at the masthead
descried a sail; which, at first thought to be the lost
chase, was soon discovered to be another brig,
standing, like the Viper, to the south. Upon this,
Hellcat, who had been assuaging his wrath at the
loss of the English brig with deep potations, swore
he would take the stranger, if he died for it; a resolution
in which he was confirmed by some of his
Pensacola recruits declaring, after a time, that the
stranger was no other than the Governor's brig, the
Querida, which had herself so recently been the
pursuer.

To Brown's desire to attack her there was, at
first, a great deal of opposition made by many of

the crew, who feared she was actually cruising in
search of us; in which case there was every reason
to believe she was sufficiently well manned and
armed to subdue us; but the lieutenant Diablillo
swore he had no apprehensions of that—the Querida
was a private vessel entirely, armed, indeed, as all
trading vessels were, in that period of war, but
slightly; and if she had been despatched after the
Jumping Jenny, it was because no other vessel in
port could be so easily got ready, and because little
danger to her was to be apprehended from the resistance
of the Jumping Jenny; and he added,
moreover, as a thing he knew, that the Querida, at
the period of our flight, was preparing to sail to the
Havanna, with invalid soldiers from the garrison;
and, he had no doubt, she was now on the voyage,
and might be easily taken; but, he added, with a
freebooter's discretion, as there was no reason to
suppose she could have any, and much less a valuable
cargo on board, coming from such a place as
Pensacola, he saw nothing to be gained by engaging
her, except blows; for, truly, it might be expected
the old soldiers would make some kind of resistance.

Brown swore, in reply, the gain would be the
brig herself; and declared, with many oaths, he
would have her; “he had fallen in love with her,”
he said, “in Philadelphia at first sight, and had
nearly run his head into a noose, trying to get her;
and if she was Governor Aubrey's ship, that only
made him more determined to take her;—for why,
he had sworn eternal war against him and his
whole blood, (and, blast him, he began the world,
and the life of a man, by shedding it;) and he
would be curst if he ever let slip an opportunity to
do him a mischief.”

No one presumed to debate a question already decided
by Captain Hellcat; and, accordingly, it was
resolved the Querida should be his: upon which he
magnificently promised, as soon as the prize was
secured, the victory should be celebrated by a
carouse, and they should all, in his own phrase,
“get as drunk as emperors.”

As the intended victim was steering the same
course with the Viper, nothing more was done with
the latter, after preparing the guns (of which we
had now two twelve-pounders, taken from a prize,
besides long-tom,) and other weapons, but to shorten
sail a little, so as to let the Querida gradually overtake
us; which, by and by, she did, not seeming to
have any suspicion of our being any thing more
than honest British traders, (for we had an English
flag at the mast-head;) and about an hour before
nightfall she had come so nigh, that Brown was
able, after firing a broadside, that was meant not so
much to injure the vessel as to strike a panic into
her crew, to run her aboard and grapple with her;
after which her capture was soon effected by boarding.
It is true, her crew, who were many of them
Americans, that had shipped in her at Philadelphia,
though taken completely by surprise, made a gallant
effort at resistance, firing off one of her guns,
as we closed with her, by which several of our men
were torn to pieces; and then, when the latter
were leaping on board, delivering a volley of
muskets and pistols, which they had hastily caught
up; but they were but fifteen or sixteen in number,
their captain, from whom they derived their courage,
was cut down at the first flash of a cutlass; and it
was madness to oppose such an overpowering force
as was arrayed against them. Some threw down
their arms and ran below, to gain a temporary and

unavailing concealment; while others begged for
quarter, which was refused them. In five minutes
the Querida was a prize, and Hellcat her master.

During these brief moments, as well as for hours
before, I had remained on the deck of the Viper,
expecting and then witnessing a spectacle which I
had always before been happy to shun—the sight of
the murderous conflict. Never before had I anticipated
an engagement, save with grief and horror;
but on this occasion, I looked forward to the attack
with an eager impatience as great as that of the
veriest pirate on board. Alas! I hoped that the
pirates were, after all, deceived—that the Querida
was well armed, and actually in search of us, and
that the onset of the Viper would be the signal only
for her own capture. I fancied, when she came so
nigh that I could almost count the men on her deck,
that she had craftily concealed, like the Viper, the
overpowering numbers of her crew, to lure the pirates
more surely to their doom; and even when the
latter were boarding her, I looked to see them suddenly
leaping out to overmaster the assailants.

The fall and flight of her vanquished defenders,
and the rush of the pirates, some into the cabin,
others into the forecastle and hold, after the miserable
survivors, dispelled the illusion; and I covered
my eyes with my hands, that I might see no more
of the scene of butchery.

At that moment, there came from the Querida the
shrieks of women—the cries of several female
voices, one of which smote like the peal of my own
death-bell upon my ear. I started up, and looked
wildly to the Querida, from whose cabin issued several
of the pirates, one of them dragging with him
a man—a Catholic priest—who, with looks of terror,
extended a crucifix above his head, as if with that

symbol of divine mercy, to entreat the mercy of
man, the pity of the slayers around him; another
haling along a woman, in whom I immediately
recognised the Casera, or housekeeper of Colonel
Aubrey; and a third, the lieutenant Diablillo, dragging—Oh,
my God! it was Isabel herself!

I leaped—I forgot then the abjectness and pusillanimity
of spirit, to which despair had reduced me
—I leaped from the schooner into the brig, and
dared to seize the bulky Diablillo by the arm, with
the frantic cry, “Villain, unhand the lady!” when
my puny heroism was rewarded by a buffet from
his Herculean fist, by which I was thrown bleeding
to the deck; while, with the other, he grasped
the shrieking Isabel, exclaiming with exultation,
“Fuego de Dios! let others take what they want,
here is my share of the plunder!”

“Yours, you blasted jackanapes?” roared Captain
Hellcat, who made his appearance from some other
part of the vessel, and gave a snatch at the lieutenant's
prize: “take the granny and the niggur gals,
if you want; but, d—n my blood, this prize falls to
your master.”

“You shall have my blood first,” cried the lieutenant;
who, suddenly letting go his hold of the
wretched Isabel, and calling, with the rancour of
long concealed envy or hatred, “Let every Spainard
stand by me, and down with the American tyrant!”
attacked Hellcat with his cutlass; while Hellcat,
nothing loath, crying, “Let every man stand
by, and see the end of a mutineer!” engaged his
rebellious lieutenant with equal strength and superior
skill, and at the third blow brought him to the
deck, with his skull cloven to the eyes. The Spanish
pirates, who composed nine tenths of the whole

crew, were perhaps willing enough to side with
Diablillo, and put down their foreign master: but
they paused to await the result of the conflict; and
the moment it terminated, they returned to their
allegiance, with loud cries of “Captain Hellcat forever!
and down with all traitors!”