University of Virginia Library

SEQUEL.

It was a terrible storm. The wind, with all the awful accompaniments
of rain, hail, rattling thunders, and fiercely
glaring lightnings, had burst down upon the liquid plains of
the startled deep, in all the fury of a tropical tornado. The
black heavens were in terrific commotion above; and the smitten
and resilient waters, as if to escape the impending wrath of
the aroused sister elements, were fleeing in galloping mountains
athwart the surface of the boiling ocean beneath.

Could aught human, or aught of human construction, be
here, now, and survive? It would seem an utter impossibility;
and yet it was so. Amidst all this deafening din of battling
elements, that were filling the heavens with their uproar and
lashing the darkened ocean into wild fury and commotion, a
staunch-built West India merchant-ship was seen, now madly
plunging into the troughs of the sea, and now quivering like a
feather on the towering waves, or scudding through the flying
spray with fearful velocity before the howling blast.

On her flush deck, and lashed to the helm, with the breaking
waves dashing around his feet, and the water dripping from
the close cap and tightly-buttoned pea-jacket in which he was
garbed, stood her gallant master, in the performance of a duty
which he, true to his responsibility, would intrust to no other,
in such an hour as this, — that of guiding his storm-tossed bark
among the frightful billows that were threatening every instant,
to engulf her. Thus swiftly onward drove the seemingly
devoted ship, strained, shivering, and groaning beneath the terrible

power of the gale, like an over-ridden steed, as she
dashed, yet unharmed, through the mist and spray and constantly-breaking
white caps of the wildly-rolling deep; thus
onward sped she, for the full space of two hours, when the
wind gradually lulled, and with it the deafening uproar subsided.
Presently a young, well-dressed gentleman made his
appearance on deck, amidships, and, having noted a while the
now evident subsidence of the tempest, slowly and carefully,
from one grasped rope to another, made his way to the side of
the captain, at the wheel.

“A frightful blow, Mr. Elwood,” said the latter; “for the
twenty years I have been a seaman, I have never seen the
like.”

“It certainly has exceeded all my conceptions of a sea-storm,”
said the other. “But do you know where we are, and
where driving at this tremendous speed?”

“Yes, I think I do, both. When we were struck by the
gale, which I saw was going to be a terrible norther, and saw it,
too, very luckily, at a distance that enabled me to become well
prepared for it, look at my reckoning, and make all my calculations,
— when we were struck, we were three hundred and
fifty miles out of Havana, north'ard, and about forty from the
American coast. I at once put the ship before the wind, and
set her course southeast, which, being perfectly familiar with
these seas, I knew would give her a safe run, and, in about
sixty miles, carry her by the southern point of the Little Bahama
Bank, where, rounding this great breakwater against
northers, we should be in a comparatively smooth sea, that
would admit of either laying to or anchoring. It is now over
two hours since we started on this fearful race, which has kept
my heart in my mouth the whole time; and I am expecting,
every minute, to get sight of that rocky headland.”

“But that,” rejoined Elwood (for the gentleman was no
other than Claud Elwood, as the reader has doubtless already

inferred), “that will bring us, according to the late rumor, into
one of the principal haunts of the pirates, will it not?”

“Yes, partly, perhaps,” replied the captain; “but I hear
that Commodore Porter has arrived, with the American squadron,
in these seas, to break up these pests, and I presume has
done it, or frightened them away, so that we sha'n't be molested.
At any rate, I saw no safer course to outlive such a tempest.
You are the owner of ship and cargo, to be sure; but
you put on me the responsibility of her safety.”

“Certainly,” rejoined the other, “for my guidance would be
a poor one; and, instead of any disposition to criticise your
course, Captain Golding, I feel but too grateful, with the life
of a beloved wife at stake, to say nothing of my own, and so
much property, that your skill has enabled us to outride the
storm — now nearly over, I think — so unexpectedly well. But
what is that, a little to the left of the ship's course, in the distance
ahead?”

“Ah, that is it!” cheerily exclaimed the captain, casting an
eager look in the indicated direction. “Why, how like a race-horse
the ship must be driving ahead! I looked not ten minutes
ago, and nothing was to be seen; and now there is the
headland, in full view, but two or three leagues distant! And
stay, — what is that dark object around and a little beyond the
point? A ship? Yes, it grows distinct now, — a large, black
ship. That, sir, is an American frigate. Hurra to you, Elwood!
We will now soon be safe, and in safe company.”

It was about sunset. The merchantman, having passed the
protecting promontory, and swept around the tall ship of war,
had gained an offing, about a half mile beyond, under the lee
of a thickly-wooded, long, narrow island; and was now lying
snugly at anchor, riding out the heavy ground-swell occasioned
by the abated storm; while all on board, unsuspicious of molestation,
were making preparations to turn in for the night.

“A sail to the leeward!” shouted a sailor, just sent aloft to
make some alteration in the rigging.

The word was passed below; and the captain, mates, and
Elwood, were instantly on deck, and on the lookout. They at
once descried a large black schooner, creeping out from behind
the farther end of the island against which they were anchored,
about a mile distant, and tacking and beating her way
towards them. She carried no colors by which her character
could be determined; but the very absence of all such insignia,
together with the sinister appearance of her long, low sides,
which exhibited the aspect of masked port-holes, and also the
peculiar stir of her evidently large and strange-looking crew,
at once marked her as an object of suspicion.

“Elwood, your fears were prophetic,” said the captain, lowering
his glass from a long, intent observation. “That craft
is a pirate, with scarce a shadow of doubt. But don't the mad
creature see the frigate, and the frigate her?”

With this, they all turned towards the ship of war; but she
was no longer visible. A narrow vein of land fog, put in
motion by some local current in shore, had been wafted out on
to the water, and completely enshrouded her from their view.

“I see it all,” exclaimed Elwood. “That pirate has been
lying, all the afternoon, concealed behind this island; and his
spies, sent into the woods on the island, and to this end of it,
probably, saw both our ship and the frigate take their positions,
and this intervening fog coming on, and reported all to
their master; who at once conceived the bold design which he
has now started out to execute, — that of snatching us, as its
prize, from under the very guns of the frigate!”

A brief, earnest consultation was then held; when, knowing
the uselessness of trying to signalize the frigate, they first
thought to weigh anchor and try to escape to her protection;
but a little reflection told them the enemy would be down upon
them before this could be effected, and they would be taken,
unprepared for defence. The only other alternative left them
was, therefore, quickly adopted; and, in pursuance, the second
mate and two seamen were lowered in the life-boat, with

orders to keep the ship between themselves and the schooner
till they got into the screening fog, and then make their way,
with all speed, to the frigate, to invoke her aid and protection;
while all the rest should arm themselves with the muskets,
swords, and pistols on board, and, if possible, hold the enemy
at bay till succor arrived. And scarcely had these hasty preparations
been made, before the piratical schooner, which had
made a wide tack outward to catch the wind, came swiftly
sweeping round to their side, like a towering falcon on his
prey. But, by some miscalculation of her helmsman, she went
twenty yards wide of them — not, however, without betraying
the full extent of her bloody purposes; for as, under the impulse
of a speed she found herself unable instantly to check,
she swept by on the long, rolling billows, a score or two of
desperate ruffians, headed by their burly and still more fierce-looking
captain, stood on her deck, armed to the teeth, and
holding their hooks and hawsers, ready to grapple and board
their intended prey. But, still forbearing to unmask their batteries
or fire a gun, lest they should thus bring down the frigate
upon them, her grim and silent crew sprang to their posts, to
tack ship and come round again, with the narrowest sweep, to
repair their former mischance. And, with surprising quickness,
their well-worked craft was again, and this time with no
uncertain guidance, shooting alongside of the devoted merchantman.
Still the crew of the latter quailed not; but, well
knowing there was no longer any hope of escaping a struggle
in which death or victory were the only alternatives, stood,
with knitted brows and fire-arms cocked and levelled, silently
awaiting the onset. It came. With the shock of the partial
collision as the assailing craft raked along the sides of their
ship, and the sudden jerk as she was brought up by the quickly-thrown
grapples, the pirate captain, with a fierce shout of defiance,
cleared, at a single bound, the intervening rails, and
landed, with brandished sword, upon their fore-deck. A dozen
more, with a wild yell, were in the act of following, when they
were met by a full volley from the guns of the defenders,
poured into their very faces. There was a pause, — a lurch, —
a crack of breaking fixtures; and the next moment the schooner,
torn away from her fastenings by the force of a monstrous upheaving
wave, and thrown around at right angles to the unharmed
prey so nearly within her clutches, was seen rolling
and reeling on the top of a billow, fifty yards distant. At that
instant, twenty jets of blinding flame fiercely burst from the
edge of the fog-cloud, almost within pistol-shot to the windward,
and, with the startling flash, rent sky and ocean leaped as with
the concussion of a closely-breaking volley of linked thunder-peals.
There was another and still more awful pause; when,
through the cloud of sulphurous smoke that was rolling over
them, the astounded defenders heard the gurgling rush, as of
waters breaking into newly opened chasms, in the direction of
the enemy; and they comprehended all. The frigate, unperceived
by the eager pirates, had dropped down, rounded to,
and sent a whole broadside directly into the uprolled hull of
the devoted craft, which had been reduced to a sinking wreck
by that one tremendously heavy discharge of terrible missiles.
Within two minutes the lifting smoke disclosed her, reeling and
lurching for the final plunge. Within one more, she rose upright,
like some mortally-smitten giant, quivered an instant,
and, with all her grim and hideously-screeching crew, went
down, stern foremost, amid the parting waves of the boiling
deep.

These startling scenes had transpired so rapidly that the
amazed crew of the merchantman had taken no thought of the
pirate captain whom they had seen leaping on their deck; but
they now turned to look for him, and, whether dead or alive, to
take charge of him, to crown the fortunate result of this fearful
encounter. There he stood at bay, with back turned to the
foremast, facing his virtual captors, with a brandished sword in
one hand and a pistol in the other, as if daring them to approach
or fire on him. But they were spared the necessity of attempting

either. A boat's crew of armed men from the frigate were
already mounting the deck, to claim whoever of the pirates
they found alive, as their trophies. The formidable desperado
was pointed out to them; when, firing a volley over his head,
to confuse without killing him, they rushed forward in the
smoke, disarmed, bound, and dragged him along, to pass him
down to their boat. As he was being urged across the deck,
his eyes met those of Elwood. The recognition was mutual.
It was Gaut Gurley!

It was morning, and the bright sun was looking down upon
an ocean as calm and peaceful as if its passive bosom had never
been disturbed by the ensanguined tumults of warring men, or
the commotions of battling elements.

A youthful couple were standing by the rail, on the deck of
the still anchored merchantman, and glancing up admiringly at
the towering masts of the ship-of-war, which had also anchored
for the night on the very spot from which she had dealt such
destruction to the pirates, whose awful fate and the connected
circumstances had been with them the topic of conversation.

“This has been such a fearful ordeal to you, dear Fluella,”
said the young man, smilingly, “that I shall probably never be
able again to induce you to leave home to cross the ocean, either
for health or pleasure, shall I?”

“For pleasure, no, my dear husband,” affectionately responded
the other; “no, with my happy New England home,
never, for pleasure, Claud.”

“But this was for health,” rejoined Elwood. “I have never
told you how much I was concerned about you last summer, or
that your physician warned me, as cold weather approached,
he could not answer for your life through another winter at the
North. It was this only that led me to urge you to accompany
me to Cuba, to remain there till I came back for you in the
spring, as I have now done. And, to say nothing of the gains
which my two trips will add to the estate of which I am heir in
expectation, — or rather, as my good uncle will have it, in possession

with him, — to say nothing of this, I shall always be
thankful for your coming, for it has so evidently restored you,
I had almost said, to more of health and beauty than I have
seen you exhibiting for the whole two and a half happy years
of our married life.”

“Thank you, Claud, for the beautiful part of it,” said the
happy wife, snapping her handkerchief in his face, with an
air of mock resentment; “but I am thinking of home. When
shall we reach there?”

“Well, let us calculate,” replied the husband, beginning to
catch the affectionate animation of the other: “this is the 22d
of April; and I think I can promise you the enjoyment of a
May-day in New England.”

“I hold you to that, sir,” playfully rejoined the wife, “for I
wish to be preparing for our summer residence at your cottage
on my native lakes. My illness deprived me of that pleasure
last summer, you know, husband mine.”

“Yes,” said he, with kindling enthusiasm, “we will go, Fluella.
I want to see the good old chief; I want to enjoy the
visit I have promised me from my friend Carvil; I want to hear
Phillips discourse on woodcraft, and Chanticleer Codman wake
the echoes of the lakes by his marvellous crowing. Yes, yes,
we will go, and make uncle and mother go with us, this time.”

“Uncle and mother!” cried Fluella, laughingly; “how odd
that is getting to sound. Suppose I call your mother aunt?
Have they not now been married long enough to be both entitled
to the more endearing names of father and mother? and
are they not happy enough and good enough to merit the dearest
names?”

“Yes,” answered Elwood, “I will correct the habit, if you
really wish it. Yes, yes; the once-styled crusty old bachelor,
Arthur Elwood, and my mother, are indeed a happy couple.
Did you ever know a happier?”

“Yes, one,” replied the hesitating, blushing wife, drawing

down her husband's head, and slyly imprinting a kiss on his
cheek.

The conversation between the happy pair was here interrupted
by the appearance of a boat putting off from the frigate,
under the charge of a midshipman; who, having come on board
and inquired out Elwood, now approached and presented him
a letter, saying, as he departed, it was from the pirate prisoner,
and would doubtless require no answer.

The greatly surprised young man tore open the letter, and,
in company with his wife, read, with mingled emotions of pain
and indignation, the following singular but characteristic compound
of malicious vaunt and shameless confession:

On finishing this singular and remorseless missive, with its
strange, painful, but as he feared too true disclosure of the
secret of that fatal influence which had proved the ruin and
final destruction of his father, Claud Elwood was too much
troubled and overcome to utter a word of comment; and, with
his pained and shuddering wife, he stood mute and thoughtful,
until aroused by the stir on board, in preparations for weighing
anchor, and the cheering announcement of the captain that a
favoring breeze was springing up, and that within twenty minutes
they would be, under the fairest of auspices, on their rejoicing
way to their own beloved New England.

But the cheering thought was not to be enjoyed without the
drawback of being compelled to witness one more and a concluding
horror.

As Elwood and his beautiful companion were on the point of
retiring from deck, their attention was suddenly arrested by a
light, crashing sound, high up the tall side of the frigate. They
looked, and caught sight of broken pieces of board or panelling
flying out, as if beat or kicked from what appeared to have
been a closed port-hole. Presently the body of a man, whom
they at once recognized, was protruded through the ample aperture
he had evidently thus effected, till he brought himself to a
balance on the outer edge. Then came the sharp cry from
some one of the frigate's officers:

“Look out, there, for the pirate prisoner!”

There was at once a lively stir on board, but too late.
The next moment the heavily-manacled object of the alarm
descended, like a swiftly-falling weight, to the water; and, with
a dull plunge, the recoiling waves rolled back, forever closing
over the traitor, the robber, the murderer, and the pirate, Gaut
Gurley!