University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
THE PILOT'S BOAT.

The relative position of, and the several courses steered by the three vessels
have, no doubt, been rendered sufficiently clear by the foregoing details. A
view of the further progress of the contest will be best obtained by joining the
party in the cupola, their number being now augmented by Henry Hood, who
had been sent for into the library by his father, with a request to join them.
We now resume the narrative of events from the point at which we took it up
in the first chapter.

The cruiser finding that the schooner would prove a formidable opponent,
and seeing that her broadsides fell short, and that her shot fired at the merchantman
in order to cripple her did not reach her, put away a little, for she
had been steering all along close to the wind after the ship, and stood right
through the passage of the islands in which two miles distant the schooner had
taken her position to cannonade her. On this course the two ships were then
running nearly in parrallel lines, two miles and a half apart, their courses
gradually converging to a point near the Head-land; and the corvette being
the fastest sailer, had the schooner been out of the way, she would have cut
her off from the inner passage also. The merchantman crowded all sail to
gain the advantage, being protected at present by a narrow island a mile long
that lay between their lines of sailing, from her shot, though the royals of the
cruiser were visible over the land. The privateer had shortened sail and laid
her topsail to the mast when she commenced bowling her forty-four's at the
cruiser, and each moment the Englishman was now lessening the distance between
them. The distance from the villa to the cruiser was now about four
and a half miles, and to the merchantman not more than two miles. They had
therefore, even without glasses, a clear view of the exciting scene.

`There will be warm work soon,' said Colonel Hood, with a grave and earnest
face.

`There is no question of it,' responded Hebert. `Each moment the corvette
is getting nearer her opponent without minding his long gun, though it is doing
terrible execution on board, for I can see that every shot tells either in her
spars or hull, and there goes her foreyard down out of the sling's; and see the
topmast follows it and goes swooping with all its canvass over the side into the
sea!'

`This is surprising success for that little vessel,' said Henry, who watched
with a flushed cheek and kindling eye this novel scene. `I am surprised the
English ship should press forward so in the very face of such a destructive
missile!'

`It is her only chance. If she gets within range of the schooner she sinks
her without she takes her! I would not give three piastres for the schooner
and the lives of every soul on board if the cruiser gets near enough to make
her broadside effective.'

`How long will this be, Hebert?' asked Mary fearfully. `Oh that the brave
schooner might take care of itself.'

`I have little fears for her, for he who commands her knows well what he is
about. He has been cooly letting her advance, and aiming his shot at her
spars, knowing if he could cripple her he would stop her progress ere she could
reach him with her shot. You see she moves with less speed since the loss of
her fore-topmast.'

`Why is it, can you tell, Hebert,' asked Henry, `why the frigate is every
half minute firing a single gun from her bows, and about as often a single gun
from her quarter deck?'

`The bow-gun is `a feeler.'

`A feeler?' asked Henry with a smile.

`Yes. The shot is to the corvette eye and hand, by which she measures her
distance to her object. At every discharge an officer watches with his glass
where it strikes, and by this means they know at the earliest moment when
they get up within range! If he should see a shot strike her hull or pass through
her sails, you would instantly see her put her helm down, bring her broadside
to bear, and pour into the schooner a most deadly fire; and as the schooner
lays with about three quarter beam towards her, it would send her to the bottom.'

`What a fearful power lies in the instruments of modern warfare,' remarked
Henry Hood.

`And what skill and experience to make use of them,' said his father. `I
have made up my mind that an officer in command of a ship in action requires
more coolness, courage and decision than a military officer can possibly be
called upon to exercise in the field! In a battery indeed, his position is something
like that of a sea-commander's; but then, he has only his battery to defend;
while the seaman has his ship to defend, to sail, to pilot out of perils, to
capture his enemies ship, and repair important damages to his spars and hull
all at once. To command a ship successfully in action, requires a combination
of talents that few military men require to exercise, though they have
them; for there is every wit as much bravery in the army as in the navy, and
genius of the right temper. But the services are so very different that the education
of both must be difficult. I consider Nelson by far a greater man than
Napoleon Bonaparte, for the very reasons I have given. To carry a fleet of
line of battle ships into action and win battles as Nelson did, requires a genius,
it seems to me, transcending all other human requirements!'

`This is an unusual opinion, father, for a military man to give,' said Henry.

`It is because I firmly believe it!'

`You did not say, Hebert, what the single guns were probably fired at, from
the stern, and over the lower point of the island to,' said Mary.

`At the boat that put off from the schooner! There it is in the range of that
single tree!'

`Oh, I see it now! It is near the ship! What object can they have in trying
to destroy that mere spec!'

`That mere spec contains probably the very seed of the ships preservation.
The pilot is on board of her, that the privateer sent to her, in compliance with
her signals!'

`Every shot strikes near the boat,' said Henry, who, now had the glass at his
eye; and one just now struck the water within fifty yards the other side, and
then bounded and struck it a hundred rods on this side of her!'

`Could you see the shot, Henry?'

`Oh no—but I can see the spray dashed into the air wherever the shot
strikes! There are eight men in the boat, and they pull along as steadily as
if they were unconscious of or indifferent to their danger!'

`They have little fears,' answered Hebert! `They know it is no easy matter
for a rowing boat two miles distant, to be hit by guns fired at them on the
other side of a low island; for where she is the boat is only visible from the
highest part of the enemy's quarter deck, and the gun has to be elevated and
fired like a howitser, some one giving directions how to aim, being stationed in
the rigging!'

`But they have hit her!—God have mercy upon the poor fellows!' cried Col.
Hood, taking his glass from his eye and looking deadly pale. Miss Hood
clung to her brother's arm, who was still looking through the glass, and moved
her colorless lips in earnest supplication for the sufferers. Hebert had taken
the glass from Colonel Hood, who refused to look upon the painful scene.

`The boat has sunk under them! The fragments are scattered upon the
water. I can count six heads—nay, seven!'

`Only seven?' asked the Colonel, with emotion.

`There are but seven, sir.'

`Then one poor fellow has gone. Heaven uphold these!'

`Count, them, Edward,' cried Mary Hood.

`There are but seven, sister,' he said sadly. `They are swimming manfully
and will yet have succor from the ship which is bearing towards them, and is
not a quarter of a mile distant.'

`The ship is letting down her boats! I see the men leaping into them!—
There they are afloat and now pulling ahead of the ship. Fear not, they will
all be saved!'

`But the poor fellow that is gone,' said Mary sorrowfully.

`But he has not gone! I see eight persons in the water and have counted
them twice,' cried Henry.

`See, Hebert. Do you make out the same number?' eagerly asked the
Colonel.

`Yes, sir. There are as many in the water as there were in the boat.'

`Then praised be God!' fervently ejaculated the Colonel.

`Oh joy, joy! This is indeed a relief,' cried Mary, taking her father's hand,
and throwing an arm around his neck she kissed him with an emotion that
found vent in a gush of tears; so strong is the sympathy that exists between
human life and human life.

In a few minutes they had the happiness to see every one of the swimmers
taken out of the water by the crew of the merchantman's boat, which they beheld
soon after taken on board; the ship in the meanwhile not having shortened
sail or altered her course in the least.

`Now, we must see more mischief done, I fear,” said Colonel Hood, `but it
will not be so palpable to us as the destruction of this little boat. In five
minutes the merchantman will have passed beyond the protection of the intervening
island, and as the course of the corvette is converging towards hers
every instant, and as she knows she can now reach her if she could reach the
boat, we may soon expect warm work for the poor unprotected ship.'

`Yes; that is if the privateer will give her consent,' responded Hebert!—
`As the cruiser approaches her, more slowly than before you see, on account
of having her fore-top-mast shot away, the schooner retires stretching away on
the wind westward, gradually nearing the ship.'

`At the same time what a deliberate and terrific firing of her huge gun she
keeps up.'

`Yes, and that Long Tom will serve the merchantman yet. The corvette
gets at least three iron forty-two's a minute somewhere about her hull or hamper.
Two of her ports are already knocked into one. Her fore-top-mast, with
the whole of her fore-top-mast hamper, has gone by the board, and I can see
that full three fathoms of her hammock nettings with as much of her bulwarks
on her larboard quarter are shot away. If the cruiser gets one of them
shot between wind and water, her men will have no rations given out to-morrow,
nor no need of hammocks to-night.'

`Yet she stands fearlessly on.'

`If the captain is a true British tar, he will stand on so long as two timbers
hold together. He knows it would be infamy to let a privateer with a Long
Tom cut him off from a rich prize.'

`I fear for the bold schooner!' said Mary Hood who, in spite of the terrible
associations of such a scene, was deeply interested in every movement of the
vessels, her whole sympathies as well as those of all present deeply enlisted
both for the schooner and merchantman.

`There the merchantman has it,' suddenly cried Hebert as a range of bright
flashes and belching smokes from the cruiser's side told them that she had
opened upon the chase. It was an instant before the roar of the co-mingled
explosions of so many guns reached their ears. The sound in itself was grand
and awful, like thunder rolling; but as they felt that death must be borne up
on it to many a life, they heard it with a shudder, and with solemn looks.—
Hebert, however, may be excepted from this remark; for he experienced no
other feeling than that of strong and enthusiastic excitement.

All eyes were turned to the ship to witness the effect of the shot.

`It has not hurt her!' said Hebert with an oath of surprise and pleasure.

`Nephew, you forget this is not a ship's deck,' said his uncle.

`I am reproved,' he answered with a light laugh.

`I can discover two shot holes in her upper sails,' said Henry who was closely
observing the merchantman with his glass.

`I see them! They aimed too high. They will discover the fault and depress
their guns the next fire.'

`Oh, I hope they will not fire again,' said Miss Hood, shrinking.

`They will coz, unless the ship strikes.'

`She has shown no colors,' said the Colonel. `That looks as if she did not
intend to strike.'

`There they go to her peak—the stars and stripes! That is wise in her, for
she must have something to show when she strikes.'

`Do you think she has hoisted them for fear she must yet strike to her enemy?
asked Henry. `It looks to me like bravado and defiance.'

`It may be a little of that too. Look now at that schooner. Her colors she
is now showing for the first time!'

There are three—one under the other. It is a signal,' said Col. Hood.

`No sir! That fellow is a cool one. The upper is the American flag; the
next under it is a red flag with some private mark in the centre, and the one
under all is the red cross of King George and merry England!'

`That is a daring insult to the corvette!' exclaimed Colonel Hood.

`It is, and I will tell you, uncle, who has dared to do it. That middle flag
there is now no mistaking. It is Freemantle's the celebrated Privateersman!
`I might have guessed it from the very first.'

`Freemantle! I have heard of him as one of the most successful and bold
cruisers we have had on the ocean during the war.'

`It is the man. That is his private signal which I have heard he carries.—
It is a cavalier's mantle, worked (in gold thread, they say) upon a crimson
ground, and represented as if borne by the wind through the air.'

`A singular device.'

`It has something to do with the circumstances by which his ancestors got
their name. Now that he is here I am quite sure the corvette will have her
match. There goes another of his bowling balls into her!'

`And there thunders another broadside into the merchant-man!'

`See!—what a crash and tumbling of her upper masts and sails!' cried
Henry.

`I fear she will be taken spite of bold Freemantle,' exclaimed Mary, clasping
her hands and gazing earnestly upon the cloud of battle that rolled over
the wave and hid the cruiser.

`There goes a gun,' he exclaimed; `two—three of them from the merchant-man.
But they are small, and can do no more service than quakers. It shows
spirit, however.'

`And there, at the same time, goes her flag down,' said Colonel Hood.

`She has fired and struck!' cried Hebert with an oath of surprise and vexation;
`Freemantle for once has been foiled.'