Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader by R. M. Ballantyne (best ereader for textbooks TXT) 📖

black dogs have attacked the Christian settlement, as it is called, and you know as well as I do, that Gascoyne would not let slip the chance to pitch into the undefended village of the niggers, and pay them off for the mischief they have done to us more than once. At any rate, I mean to go round and blow down their log huts with Long Tom; so you can go ashore if you don’t like the work.”

Manton knew well, when he made this allusion to mischief formerly done to the crew of the Foam, that he touched a rankling sore in the breast of Scraggs, who in a skirmish with the natives some time before had lost an eye; and the idea of revenging himself on the defenceless women and children of his enemies was so congenial to the mind of the second mate, that his objections to act willingly under Manton’s orders were at once removed.

“Ha!” said he, commencing to pace to and fro on the quarter-deck with his superior officer, while the men made the necessary preparations for the intended assault, “that alters the case, Mr Manton. I don’t think, however, that Gascoyne would have taken advantage of the chance to give the brutes what they deserve, for I must say he does seem to be unaccountably chicken-hearted; perhaps it’s as well that he’s out of the way. Do you happen to know where he is or what he’s doing?”

“Not I. No doubt he is playing some sly game with this British cruiser, and I dare say he may be lending a hand to the settlers, for he’s got some strange interests to look after there, you know,” (here both men laughed,) “and I shouldn’t wonder if he was beforehand with us in pitching into the niggers. He is always ready enough to fight in self-defence, though we can never get him screwed up to the assaulting point.”

“Ay, we saw something of the fighting from the hill tops, but as it is no business of ours, I brought the men down in case they might be wanted aboard.”

“Quite right, Scraggs. You’re a judicious fellow to send on a dangerous expedition. I’m not sure, however, that Gascoyne would thank you for leaving him to fight the savages alone.” Manton chuckled as he said this, and Scraggs grinned maliciously as he replied—

“Well, it can’t exactly be said that I’ve left him, seeing that I have not been with him since we parted aboard of this schooner, and as to his fightin’ the niggers alone,—hasn’t he got ever so many hundred Christian niggers to help him to lick the others?”

“True,” said Manton, while a smile of contempt curled his lip. “But here comes the breeze, and the sun won’t be long behind it. All the better for the work we’ve got to do. Mind your helm there. Here, lads, take a pull at the topsail halyards; and some of you get the nightcap off Long Tom. I say, Mr Scraggs, should we shew them the red, by way of comforting their hearts?”

Scraggs shook his head dubiously. “You forget the cruiser. She has eyes aboard, and may chance to set them on that same red, in which case it’s likely she would shew us her teeth.”

“And what then?” demanded Manton, “are you also growing chicken-hearted. Besides,” he added in a milder tone, “the cruiser is quietly at anchor on the other side of the island, and there’s not a captain in the British navy who could take a pinnace, much less a ship, through the reefs at the north end of the island without a pilot.”

“Well,” returned Scraggs, carelessly, “do as you please. It’s all one to me.”

While the two officers were conversing, the active crew of the Foam were busily engaged in carrying out the orders of Manton, and the graceful schooner glided swiftly along the coast before the same breeze which urged the Talisman to the north end of the island. The former, having few reefs to avoid, approached her destination much more rapidly than the latter, and there is no doubt that she would have arrived first on the scene of action had not the height and form of the cliffs prevented the wind from filling her sails on two or three occasions.

Meanwhile, in obedience to Manton’s orders, a great and very peculiar change was effected in the outward aspect of the Foam. To one unacquainted with the character of the schooner, the proceedings of her crew must have seemed unaccountable as well as surprising. The carpenter and his assistants were slung over the sides of the vessel, upon which they plied their screwdrivers for a considerable time with great energy, but, apparently, with very little result. In the course of a quarter of an hour, however, a long narrow plank was loosened, which, when stripped off, discovered a narrow line of bright scarlet running quite round the vessel, a little more than a foot above the water-line. This having been accomplished, they next proceeded to the figurehead, and, unscrewing the white lady who smiled there, fixed in her place a hideous griffin’s head, which, like the ribbon, was also bright scarlet. While these changes were being effected, others of the crew removed the boat that lay on the deck, bottom up, between the masts, and uncovered a long brass pivot-gun of the largest calibre, which shone in the saffron light of morning like a mass of burnished gold. This gun was kept scrupulously clean and neat in all its arrangements; the rammers, sponges, screws, and other apparatus belonging to it, were neatly arranged beside it, and four or five of its enormous iron shot were piled under its muzzle. The traversing gear connected with it was well greased, and, in short, everything about the gun gave proof of the care that was bestowed on it.

But these were not the only alterations made in the mysterious schooner. Round both masts were piled a number of muskets, boarding-pikes, cutlasses, and pistols, all of which were perfectly clean and bright, and the men—fierce enough and warlike in their aspect at all times—had now rendered themselves doubly so, by putting on broad belts with pistols therein, and tucking up their sleeves to the shoulders, thereby displaying their brawny arms as if they had dirty work before them. This strange metamorphosis was finally completed when Manton, with his own hands, ran up to the peak of the mainsail a bright scarlet flag with the single word “Avenger” on it in large black letters.

During one of those lulls in the breeze to which we have referred, and while the smooth ocean glowed in the mellow light that ushered in the day, the attention of those on board the Avenger (as we shall call the double-faced schooner when under red colours) was attracted to one of the more distant cliffs, on the summit of which human beings appeared to be moving.

“Hand me that glass,” said Manton to one of the men beside him. “I shouldn’t wonder if the niggers were up to some mischief there. Ah! just so,” he exclaimed, adjusting the telescope a little more correctly, and again applying it to his eye. “They seem to be scuffling on the top of yonder precipice. Now there’s one fellow down; but it’s so far off that I can’t make out clearly what they’re about. I say, Mr Scraggs, get the other glass and take a squint at them—you are farther sighted than I am.”

“You’re right; they are killin’ one another up yonder,” observed Scraggs, surveying the group on the cliffs with calm indifference.

“Here comes the breeze,” exclaimed Manton, with a look of satisfaction. “Now, look alive, lads; we shall be close on the nigger village in five minutes—it’s just round the point of this small island close ahead. Come, Mr Scraggs, we’ve other business on hand just now than squinting at the scrimmages of these fellows.”

“Hold on,” cried Scraggs with a grin; “I do believe they’re going to pitch a feller over that cliff. What a crack he’ll come down into the water with, to be sure. It’s to be hoped the poor man is dead, for his own sake, before he takes that flight. Hallo!” added Scraggs with an energetic shout and a look of surprise, “I say, that’s one of our men; I know him by his striped flannel shirt. If he would only give up kicking for a second I’d make out his — humph! it’s all up with him now, poor fellow, whoever he is.”

As he said the last words, the figure of a man was seen to shoot out from the cliff, and, descending with ever increasing rapidity, to strike the water with terrific violence, sending up a jet of white foam as it disappeared.

“Stand by to lower the gig,” shouted Manton.

“Ay, ay, sir,” was the hearty response of the men, as some of them sprang to obey.

“Lower away!”

The boat struck the water, and its crew were on the thwarts in a moment. At the same time the point of the island was passed, and the native village opened up to view.

“Load Long Tom—double shot!” roared Manton, whose ire was raised not so much at the idea of a fellow-creature having been so barbarously murdered, as at the notion of one of the crew of his schooner having been so treated by contemptible niggers. “Away, lads, and pick up that man.”

“It’s of no use,” remonstrated Scraggs; “he’s done for by this time.”

“I know it,” said Manton, with a fierce oath, “bring him in, dead or alive; if the sharks leave an inch of him, bring it to me. I’ll make the black villains eat it raw.”

This ferocious threat was interlarded with and followed by a series of terrible oaths which we think it inadvisable to repeat.

“Starboard!” he shouted to the man at the helm, as soon as the boat shot away on its mission of mercy.

“Starboard it is.”

“Steady!”

While he gave these orders, Manton sighted the brass gun carefully, and, just as the schooner’s head came up to the wind, he applied the match.

Instantly a cloud of smoke obscured the centre of the little vessel as if her powder magazine had blown up, and a deafening roar went ringing and reverberating from cliff to cliff as two of the great iron shot were sent groaning through the air and pitched right into the heart of the village.

It was this tremendous shot from Long Tom, followed almost instantaneously by the entire broadside of the Talisman, that saved the life of Alice, possibly the lives of her young companions also,—that struck terror to the hearts of the savages, causing them to converge towards their defenceless homes from all directions, and that apprised Ole Thorwald and Henry Stuart that the assault on the village had commenced in earnest.