University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

The stern, impetuous orders given by
the commander of the Gaspee, were
obeyed by the officers and men, and the
schooner changing her course from N.
W. by North, braced up and stretched

across the bay in a direction N. N. East
directly for the brig.

In vain the pilot warned him that, although
the schooner had headed the
shoal, yet on account of the strong seaward
tide, it would be safer to stand on
a few hundred yards before crowding
after the brig. The impetuosity and
anger of Arling were too great for him
to listen merely to any means of caution.
He saw the channel open and
his enemy as it were within his grasp.
He therefore resolved to risk falling
upon the upper angle of the shoal, for
each moment's delay diminished his
hopes of avenging himself in his own
way upon the daring Free-Trader.—
Nevertheless, he did not wholly intermit
proper care of his vessel, for on her
safe passage across to the eastern channel,
depended his hopes of punishing
the brig. He therefore stood by the
helmsman and carefully watched his
steering, while he kept the lead constantly
going.

“Keep her away a little! More up,
man!” he said repeatedly as the leadman's
cry showed that the water was at
times shoaling.

“Four fathom lar-r-ge!” sung the
helmsman, a moment after reporting six
fathom less quarter.

“Captain Arling,” said the pilot,
very much agitated, “I am no longer
pilot of the schooner, and resign to
you my office.”

“Very well. I will find one who is
not so timid as you are, sir, to take
your place,” responded Arling scornfully.
“Go below, sir, and consider
yourself under arrest.”

“Very well, sir. But first I beg of
you to keep the schooner dead away before
the wind, as she was before, for a
little while, the current just here, sir, is
running like a mill-race, and I —
Hear that, sir!” he cried, as the leads-man
in a clear startling tone proclaimed,

“Three fathoms and half short!”

“I hear it and heed it,” answered
Arling in a tone that sounded as if he
was now satisfied that he placed his vessel
in peril. “All hands to the sheets
and braces! Let everything fly! Hard
a lee! Keep her away dead before the
wind!” he shouted in a voice of thunder.

The schooner began to head off rapidly,
and all was confusion and alarm,
for the cry of the leadsman was now,

“Three fathoms less!”

The schooner drew eleven feet large,
and every man felt that only a miracle
could save her from striking upon the
shoal, the head of which they knew to
be close under their counter.

There was a moment of anxious suspense,
each one pausing to see if the
schooner would counteract the force of
the tide and stand up before the wind,
to which her yards were now squared in
order to force her away from the shoal.
It was a moment of the most painful
solicitude to Arling, for he saw that
if the schooner struck, the brig would
escape the fate he destined for her.—
When the leadsman for the last time
cried out that there was but two fathoms
and a quarter, he saw that the
schooner was fast drifting upon the
shoal, and that nothing could save her.
Yet he was about to order his boats
ahead to aid her by towing, when there
was a shock that nearly threw every
man to the deck, the topsails flapped
against the masts, which bent and
sprung back like rods, and the Gaspee
keeling over on her weather side, remained
stationary. She had struck aft
near the rudder, which was forced a
foot out of its sockets, and swinging
round lay with her beam hard against
the head of the shoals.

No sooner did Arling find his vessel
had touched the ground, than uttering
a volley of oaths, he dashed his speaking-trumpet
upon the deck, and paced
to and fro like a madman. The
seamen in the meanwhile had been
sent aloft by the second officer, to
furl the two topsails and fore royal,
for the idea of forcing her off was
not harbored for a moment in the
force of so strong a current, and it was
necessary to ease the masts, which in
clined at a sharp angle over the waters,
and there was some danger, as the
schooner was at all times crank, that
she would go over.

“It was your fault, sir, your fault!
I will have you court-martialed! A
pretty pilot!” said Arling furiously to
the master.

“I warned you, sir,” answered the
quarter-master firmly.

“You should have taken me out by
the other channel, sir. Then we should
have met the brig as she came in, and
not have been on this bank, which may
he devils confound! It is your fault.
Here, sir, we shall have to lay till the
next tide, if we get off at all! If you
had known your duty, you would have
taken us out by the same way the brig
came in.”

“I did not expect she would come in,
sir, as we had supposed she run down
he coast of the bay to land her cargo
in the night. And these vessels with a
leading breeze like this, usually come
up by this passage. It is unusual for a
vessel to go up that side of the shoal
after dark.”

“You might have known that a vessel
that wanted to smuggle her cargo
in, would take the most unfrequented
channel.”

“I take no blame upon myself, Lieutenant
Arling; I warned you not to
cross too soon, but give the outward
tide a fair field; and when I found you
would strike across, I resigned my position
as pilot of the vessel.”

“You shall not have the honor of
resigning. You shall be broken, sir.
See what a place we are in, sir; and
yonder brig walking off with plenty of
water under her keel, and her infernal
Yankee captain laughing at us.”

“Lieutenant Arling was right in his
conjecture. Capt. Benbow was laughing
at him, exulting in the accident
which enabled him to escape his pursuer.
With his night-glass he had been
watching her, and when he saw her
brace up to cross ahead of the shoal, he
looked to see her strike upon it every
moment.

“She has braced up too soon, Captain
Benbow,” said Finch, who was
also watching her. “She will hardly
clear the top o' the sand bar on this
course! The pilot o' that craft ought
to go to school!”

The next moment, when they saw
her heel over and become stationary,
the announcement was received by all
on board with a shout of joy, and no
one was more pleased than Mr. Frankland.

“We will escape her now! She
must lie there till the next flood!” said
Captain Benbow to the merchant.

“By that time I think we shall have
the last part of the brig's cargo safely
stored in my store-house. It has been
on exciting evening to us thus far.”

“It is now eight and-a-half o'clock,”
said the captain, stooping down to examine
his watch, which hung in the
lighted binnacle. “We will reach town
in less than half an hour; and then there
will be eight good working hours.”

“With your crew and the crew of
the New Englander, which is at the

wharf ready to sail, we can unlade tonight.”

“I fear you will be imprisoned, sir;
and your brig seized as well as your
cargo.”

“Be it so! The news will go on the
wings of the wind from one end of the
colonies to the other, that a free-born
American has been cast into bonds, and
his goods taken, for asserting his birthright,
and resisting the tyranny of the
crown. I shall have the free, fiery
thoughts of thousands of patriots for my
chains, and the rich wealth of their sympathies
instead of my goods. I have resolved
from the beginning that the justice
of this revenue law should be tested.
I have wished it should be; and I, being
the first who receives a laden ship under
it, will not shrink, though I lose ship
and life.”

“If all men thought as you do, sir,”
responded Captain Benbow, “those colonies
would, in five years from now, be
free of the crown, an independent empire
in its own right.”

“The day will come when this thing
will be, my friend,” responded the merchant
with emphasis; “it may not be
while you or I live, yet something in
public events and feeling tells me the
time cannot be far distant.”

“God grant, sir, I may live to see it,”
answered the stout Captain warmly.

“The schooner is like to stay on the
shoal, sir,” said the mate, coming near
where they stood. They have had to
furl their topsails, she lists so heavily.
She must be heavy aloft, with her two
topsail yards; it is the first schooner I
ever saw with two regular top-sails on
fore and main too. Isn't it a marvel
that only one of her shot struck us, sir,
and that just knocking off the figure-head.”

“It is, when so many shot flew whiz
zing over and around us,” answered
Mr. Frankland.

“It is not easy to hit a vessel in the
night, Mr. Frankland. They did well
with their guns. I am thankful none of
us were hurt.”

“It is very ominous, sir,” said Finch
venturing to put in a word.

“What is ominous, Master Mate?”

“The hittin' that figure-head, and
knockin' it into a cocked hat.”

“Well, it is odd,” said the Captain;
“for it was a bust of King George III,
you know, sir!”

“It would have been more in keeping
with a true omen, if you had knocked
it off of one of the king's vessels with a
shot,” answered Mr. Frankland; “still
we must look upon it as a sign that the
assiduity of the crown officers to execute
the decrees of the king will result
in his destruction, or rather that of his
power in his colonies!”

“A fair interpretation, sir! That is
the meaning of it, you may be sure!
How is the lead?” added Captain Benbow
walking forward, for they were
now rapidly approaching the town, and
were near a portion of the channel
where the navigation was intricate.

“Ten fathom, sir!” answered the
leadsman in the fore chains, as he
gathered up his dripping line in small
coils in his hand, ready for another cast
of the heavy lead.

“We are out far enough, Mr. Coffin.
Now have all the light sail taken in one
by one, and without noise, for we want
to get up to town as quietly as possible!”

“You need not think, Captain, we
shall slip into the dock without being
seen by the sloop of war! Do you see
that light vessel with the water just
forward of the fore-tack?”

“Yes, I have seen it for some seconds
past!'

“Master Finch says it is the sloop's
light, sir!”

“Ah, then we will keep in with the
shore as closely as the water will give
us depth of channel!”

“We can run within two topsail
yards' length of the shore, sir, after we
get on a little further!”

“Take the helm, yourself; or rather
give it to Finch; for he is the best
pilot in the Bay! Master Finch, will
you take the brig up if Mr. Frankland
says so?”

“I do say so. Take the helm, Finch!
If the brig grounds, Captain Benbow,
while he is there, I will bear the
blame! He knows not only the channel
well, but the exact bearing of the
sloop of war!”

“That is everything, sir! We are
now within about a mile of her, and
see! there open upon us one after
another, the lights of the town. Now
let every man do his duty promptly,
and keep silence, as if he were running
through an enemy's blockading fleet!