The Cruise of the Frolic

From all I heard of Sandgate, indeed, I felt more and more thankful that Miss Manners had so fortunately escaped from his power.

Nothing worthy of note occurred to us during our very pleasant stay at Gibraltar. The day before we had arranged to leave the place, who should we fall in with but Jack Piper, a lieutenant in the navy, and a friend and old messmate of Tom Mizen’s. “Why, I thought we had left you at Plymouth!” I exclaimed as I wrung his hand.

“So you did,” he answered; “but I had been ordered to come out here and to join my ship. You know old Rullock, Mizen’s uncle. He had just before commissioned the ‘Zebra’ brig, for this station, and as she was the first vessel to sail, I got a passage in her. We had a fast run, and they only put me on shore here yesterday while she has gone to Malta. We had Mrs and Miss Mizen on board, and Mrs Mizen’s niece, Miss Susan Simms” (Jack, I knew, rather affected Miss Susan, and he looked very conscious as he mentioned her name). “Very nice girl,” he continued; “so kind of her, too, to come out just at an hour’s notice to take care of her cousin, Miss Rullock, you know. You haven’t heard, perhaps, that they are rather alarmed about Miss Laura. Caught a cold, somewhat ugly symptoms. Think her consumptive, so it was judged best to bring her out to spend a winter at Malta, and as her uncle was coming, the opportunity was a good one.”

“Ah! this news will be matter of interest to Hearty,” thought I. “We shall now see whether his feelings for Miss Mizen had any root, or whether he was affected by a mere passing fancy.”

“Poor girl! I am sorry to hear of her illness,” said I aloud. “Malta is as good a place as she could come to, and I hope the change will do her good. We shall see her there, I dare say. Have you any commands for the ladies?”

“Say I hope that my ship will be there before long,” answered Piper, absolutely blushing through the well-bronzed hue of his cheek.

He had been appointed as first lieutenant of the “Thunder,” sloop-of-war. She was expected at the Rock every day. Jack Piper was not very dissimilar in appearance and manner to Porpoise, and he was the same sort of good-natured, frank, open-hearted fellow – just the man to do a gallant, noble action, and not to say a word about it, simply because it would not occur to him that it was any thing out of the way. There are plenty of such men in the service, and England may be proud of them.

On quitting Piper I went on board the yacht, where we had agreed to assemble in the evening, to be ready for a start by daybreak. Should Hearty not have heard of the “Zebra’s” touching at the Rock, I resolved to say nothing about the matter. If he really was in love with Miss Mizen, I might chance to spoil him as a companion, and if he did not care about her, there was no harm done.

Chapter Seventeen

A Suspicious Sail – An Expected Visit from an Uninvited Stranger – We Prepare to Receive him

The Rock of Gibraltar was fading from our sight in the far distance, as the sun in a blaze of glory went down into his ocean bed between the pillars of Hercules. The yacht lay in a dead calm, her canvas idly flapping for want of more useful employment, while every spar and rope was reflected in the mirror-like surface of the watery expanse; yet she was not immovable, for the current which runs in at the mouth of the Mediterranean was sending her on at the rate of some knots an hour, over the ground pretty well in her direct course. We sat on deck and smoked our cigars, and spun many a yarn, and told many an adventure of bygone days. It was with difficulty that we could persuade ourselves to turn in, so enjoyable was the cool sea atmosphere after the burnt-up, baked, oveny air of the old Rock.

The next morning, when we came on deck, although there had not been an air in all the heavens, as Snow informed us, we had sunk Gibraltar completely beneath the sea. That day passed much like the previous one. Now and then a light breeze from the westward filled the cutter’s sails, and made her step through the water at a speed which must have astonished some of the ancient fish, which looked up at her from out of their caverned homes beneath the waves. As the day wore on we made out, away to the westward, the mastheads of a brig. As we gradually rose them it appeared that she was a polacca-rigged brig, probably a Greek laden with corn, bound out of the Straits, perhaps to supply the insatiable maw of old England with food. We had just made this discovery when we were summoned to dinner. To people who have nothing to do, any small thing affords subject of interest. I remember a story of two noblemen, shut up at a country inn on a rainy day, betting large sums on the speed of two small flies running over a pane of glass, and of others equally wise, staking larger amounts than many a naval and military officer receives in his life-time, on two spots of rain, the bet being a drawn one by the drops uniting. When we returned on deck after dinner no change had taken place. The canvas of the cutter gave every now and then an idle flap, while the sails of the Greek brig seemed very much in the same humour. We, however, were so far better off than the stranger, because the current was sweeping us, slowly indeed, but still in the direction we wanted to go, while it was carrying her away from it. Still we appeared by some mysterious influence to near each other. It was not, however, for some time that we discovered that her crew were towing her ahead, and that she had also long sweeps out, which probably sent her through the water two or three knots an hour.

“I thought those Greek seamen were idle dogs, who would not think of taking so much trouble as these fellows appear to do, even to save their lives.”

“Oh, there’s little enough to be said in their favour,” replied Porpoise. “These fellows want to get through the Straits, as they fancy they shall find a fair wind outside, so they take a little trouble now in the hopes of perfect idleness by and by.” Odd as it may seem, I could not help fancying that there was something strange about that brig, yet what it was of course I could not tell.

“Well, I shall always think favourably of the industry of Greeks, after watching those fellows,” said Carstairs.

The strange brig kept creeping up closer and closer to us; still, except an occasional glance which we took of her, as being the only object in sight, she appeared in no way to excite the interest of my messmates. I, however, as I remarked, clearly remember to have had a strange feeling of doubt and mistrust as I looked at her. It is impossible to account for similar sensations, experienced frequently by people on various occasions; had she been a rakish-looking, low, black schooner, with a wide spread of canvas, met with in the latitude of the West Indies, I might very naturally have guessed her to be a pirate or slaver; but the brig in sight was a harmless, honest-looking trader, and still I could not help frequently during the day looking at her, very much as I should have done had she been of the character of the craft I had described.

“Bubble!” exclaimed Hearty, “you know that you have promised us a tale of your own composition, and you have very frequently been missed from the deck and found pen in hand in the cabin, covering sundry sheets of paper, and when we have been wrapped in slumber you have been supposed to have sat up continuing your work. Come, man, have compassion on our curiosity, and give us the result of your lucubrations.”

“Oh, no! spare my blushes,” answered Will, with a comic sentimental look: “I don’t aim at the world-wide celebrity of an author: I am content to please a select circle of friends like yourselves. Who would read a story published under the signature of Will Bubble? No! I say, let me float on adown the quiet stream of insignificance. The post of safety is a humble station – hum!”

“Over-modesty, over-modesty, Will,” answered Hearty. “Pluck up courage, man; you will do well if you try.”

The best of the joke was, that the rogue, as I well know, had for many a year past been dabbling in literature, and often had I enjoyed a quiet laugh when reading an article from his pen.

“Well, perhaps some day I’ll try,” said he, demurely.

“Hillo! what can the fellow be wanting?” exclaimed Porpoise, interrupting our talking (I won’t call it conversation).

We all turned our eyes in the direction in which he was looking. The brig had lowered a boat, which with rapid strokes was pulling towards us.

“She seems to have a good many hands in her,” he added, holding his glass to his eye. “I don’t quite like the look of her.”

“Nor do I either, I confess,” said I. “There are some craft in this sea not altogether honest, we must remember, though they are generally met with higher up towards the Levant.”

“What ought we to do, then?” asked Hearty.

“Just serve out the cutlasses and pistols, and cast the guns loose,” said Porpoise. “Tell the people to keep an eye on the strangers, and if more than two or three attempt to come on board, to tumble them into their boat again. There’s not the slightest danger if we put on a bold front, but if we are caught napping, I would not be answerable for the consequences.”

Chapter Eighteen

The Stranger Comes on Board – The Greek Chief – A White Squall – What Has Become of the Brig? – The Suspicious Stranger again – Preparations for a Fight

The advice Porpoise gave seemed so rational that although it might have gone somewhat against the grain with so thorough a John Bull as Hearty to put himself in a posture of defence before he was attacked, Snow was summoned aft to superintend the distribution of the contents of the arm-chest. The men buckled on their cutlasses with looks of no small glee, snapping the locks of their pistols to try them before loading, as they eyed the advancing boat.

“There’s no fear, gentlemen, but what they’d give an account of twice the number of chaps as are aboard that craft, if they ever come to close quarters,” said Snow, approvingly casting his eye over the crew.

I could not help thinking the same, for a finer set of broad-shouldered, wide-chested fellows I never saw, as they stood around us with their necks bare, and the sleeves of their blue shirts tucked up above the elbows, handling their weapons with the fond look which a child bestows on a newly-given toy.

“Go forward again, my men, and keep on the opposite side to which the boat comes,” said Porpoise.

“Just stand about as if you did not suspect there was any thing wrong; very likely there may not be, you know, and perhaps the Greek has lost his reckoning, and is sending aboard us only to ask his whereabouts.”

“A craft like that wouldn’t send away a boat with twelve men in her, or more, to ask such a question,” observed Snow to old Sleet; “I know better nor that.”

“You may well say so,” answered the old man. “I’ve heard of such rum tricks being played, that I always like to be prepared for squalls.”

I must say that after the strange misgivings I had experienced in the early part of the day, when the polacca-brig first hove in sight, I was well satisfied to see the yacht put in a perfect state of defence. It was more than possible that the stranger might after all be an honest trader, and that her crew might be not a little surprised to find an English yacht with so formidable an appearance. Still again, I have always seen the wisdom of not despising an antagonist, and of being as prepared as circumstances will allow for any emergency.

The boat, a heavy launch, was meantime advancing towards us. I examined her narrowly with my glass; she had what looked very like a gun mounted in the bows, though a capote, or piece of dark canvas, was thrown over it. She pulled twelve oars, beside which three or four other people sat in the stern-sheets. I observed Porpoise, who had been, as may be supposed, attentively watching the boat, go up to the foremost gun, and draw the shot.

“Carpenter,” said he, to Chips, “bring me up a shovel of old nails and bits of iron.”

The articles in question were soon brought to him, and he proceeded forthwith to load the gun with them up to the muzzle.

“Sleet,” said he, “you have charge of this gun; if our friends there show fight, and I give the word, slap this mouthful right in among them; it will soon bring them to reason, I guess.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the old man, slapping the breech of his gun with a quiet smile, “I’ll make her speak, depend on’t.”

Thus prepared, we awaited the arrival of the suspicious-looking strangers. Had there been any wind, we might easily have prevented their coming on board by running out of their way, but as it was we could not help ourselves without fighting. In a few minutes more they pulled alongside, rather awkwardly; however, we did not order them to keep off, as it was agreed it would not be wise to show any suspicion of them. They were all dressed in the Greek costume; one of the men who sat in the stern-sheets, a full-bearded fellow, with a capote thrown over his shoulders and a fez on his head, stood up in the boat, and in broken English asked to come on board.

“Oh! let him,” said Hearty, who began to fancy we had been over-cautious. “There can’t possibly be any harm.”

The side was accordingly manned, and our friend with the capote, followed by two less ill-looking fellows, stepped unceremoniously on board.

“I speak to de captain,” said the stranger, in a blunt tone.

“I am the captain, at your service,” answered Porpoise, standing before him, and preventing his farther advance on deck.

“Oh! I come to know where you come from,” said the Greek stranger, casting his eyes furtively round the deck, as if to discover the state of defence in which we might be.

The look of our sturdy fellows, with their cutlasses by their sides, might possibly have surprised him, and at all events he must have seen that there was little chance of surprising us.

“We come from England,” answered Porpoise, bluntly. “A civil question requires a civil answer, but I don’t know by what right you ask it.”

“Where you bound for?” continued the Greek, not noticing the last remark it seemed.

“Malta, Alexandria, Smyrna, and a few other places up the Levant,” said Porpoise.

“Ah! will you take letter for me? You do me great favour,” said the Greek, putting his hand in his bosom.

While the Greek was speaking, I had been eyeing him narrowly from the after-part of the vessel, where I had placed myself. Most of my readers have heard of the famed Vanderdecken, the terrible Flying Dutchman, who in his phantom ship goes cruising about to the southward of the Cape of Good Hope, sailing right into the eye of the heaviest gale. When he falls in with a vessel, he comes aboard, and requests a packet he presents may be taken on shore. Just such another as Vanderdecken did our present visitor appear, except that the Dutchman is habited in a somewhat different costume to the Greek, in broad-brimmed hat, big-buttoned waistcoat, and wide breeches. By the way Porpoise looked at him, I had a notion some such idea was passing through his mind. Perhaps he suspected that the gentleman had a pistol instead of a letter inside the folds of his vest. The boat’s crew meantime sat scowling at us, and surveying the vessel with a no friendly look; I guessed, indeed, that nothing would have given them greater pleasure than to have been able to jump on board, and to cut all our throats.

“We shall be happy to take your letter or any commands on shore,” answered Porpoise, putting his hand in his pocket in imitation of the Greek.

The stranger furtively eyed the movement of his hand, as much as to say, “Why, have you got a pistol there likewise?”

However, withdrawing his own hand from his bosom, he exclaimed, “Ah! I have by some omission left my letter on board.”

The man spoke with as downright an English pronunciation as I ever heard in my life. Pretty well for a Greek, thought I, stepping forward to examine his features more narrowly. I had had my suspicions from the time he stepped on board; so, it appeared, had Tom Newton. There could be very little doubt about the matter; the man who stood before us in the guise of a Greek, was no other than the ci-devant pirate – slaver – smuggler, the outlaw Miles Sandgate. I thought his keen eye glanced at my countenance for a moment, as if he recognised me; but so completely did he maintain his self-possession, that he did not exhibit the slightest sign of fear or hesitation. He bit his lips though, as if he found that he had betrayed himself by speaking English too fluently, and he instantly fell back into his former mode of expression. Porpoise had either not remarked his slip of the tongue, or thought it best not to comment on it.

“I go send letter aboard,” he continued, stepping back a pace as if to be ready to spring into his boat. His crew in the mean time had begun to vociferate something I could not understand. He replied to them in the same language, and I have no doubt it was to tell them that their enterprise was fruitless, and that it was not quite so easy to catch the crew of an English yacht napping as they might have supposed. He still hesitated to take his departure. Some plan or other was passing through his fertile, ever-active brain. Perhaps he did not suspect that I had recognised him. However, whatever might have been his intentions, he was summoned hurriedly into the boat by his crew. He turned hastily round and cast his eye to the northward, so did I and Porpoise. There, rising out of the water as it were, was a small white cloud, which, as we looked, every instant increased in size.

“You’d better shorten sail, or you’ll repent it,” exclaimed the seeming Greek, as he leaped into his boat.

The crew pulled lustily away in the direction of their own vessel. Nothing comes on so rapidly and gives so little time for preparation as does a white squall in the Mediterranean. Porpoise, taking the advice offered, gave the necessary orders. All hands rushed to the halliards and downhauls, but before a rope could be let go the squall was upon us. A drill of white foam came rushing towards the cutter, driven on by some irresistible power, which at the same time curled up the whole hitherto calm and shining sea into rolling, breaking waves. Our eyes were almost blinded with the salt mist which dashed over us. Terrific was the blow we received. The cutter having no steerage-way offered a dead resistance to it. Over she went as does a stately tree, its stem cut through by the woodman’s deadly axe and saw.

“Hold on! hold on for your lives!” sung out Porpoise.

There was good reason. I thought she would never rise again. The water rose up her decks. We began to look at boats and spars as the only hope of safety. Then shrouds and stays and bolts gave way, and the stout mast cracked off at the deck with a loud crash; and the little craft rising on an even keel floated in safety, but presented a forlorn wreck compared to the gay and gallant trim in which she had lately appeared. Not a moment was to be lost in ascertaining whether the cutter had received any vital damage, and in endeavouring to put her to rights. Everybody was busily engaged in the work. Hearty and our landsmen friends took the matter very coolly.

“Just sing out where you want us to lend a hand, and we are four men,” cried Hearty, pulling and hauling away with a will, while we were getting in the wreck of our mast and spars.

The drag of the rigging astern brought the vessel up into the wind’s eye, and then she lay pitching and bobbing away into the short seas, sending the spray flying over us like a regular shower-bath, and surrounding us with a mist impervious to the sight. It was heavy work, and as part of the bulwarks had been knocked away there was no little danger of being washed overboard. Where, however, all labour with a will, the hardest task is soon performed; and no fellows could have worked harder than did our crew of yachtsmen. Before, however, the craft was in any way put to rights, the squall and its effects on the sea had completely passed away, but night coming down had shrouded us in total darkness. No one had thought of the Greek brig or her boat, and now not a glimpse of either was to be perceived.

What had become of her? Had the boat with the rascal Sandgate been swamped? Had the brig been caught by the squall and gone down? Such had been the fate of many a craft in the Mediterranean. When we had got the yacht somewhat to rights we made inquiries among the men, but no one had observed her. Old Sleet, it was said, had watched the boat pulling away for her even during the hurly-burly of the squall. I therefore called him up to examine him more particularly.

“When we was on our beam-ends, and I thought we was over for good, still I couldn’t help keeping my eye on the boat,” said the old man; “I can’t say as how I liked the look of that ere curious chap the Greek captain who came aboard us, and as for his crew, a bigger set of cut-throats I never saw. Well, thinks I to myself, if the boat goes to the bottom, and all her people goes in her, there’s no great harm done: but if she floats and gains the brig, they may just come back when we are not prepared for them, and try to knock us all on the head; but, says I to myself, there’s no use talking about it, for the gentlemen won’t believe such a thing possible, and I shall only get laughed at for my pains.”

I was very much inclined to agree with the old man, that if our Greek friend had escaped drowning, and could discover our whereabout, he would be apt to try his hand at playing us some scurvy trick; but I said nothing to this effect. I, however, resolved to speak to Porpoise, so that we might be prepared to resist any attack he might attempt to make on us. Porpoise was rather inclined to laugh at my fears.

“My belief is that the fellow went to the bottom,” he replied. “Serve him right, too, if he is the rascal you suppose him; or if he got aboard his ship he saw enough of us to know that we should prove rather a tough morsel, should he attempt to swallow us.”

A council of war having been called, it was resolved that we should try to get back to Gibraltar as fast as we could. To effect this, however, it would be necessary to rig jury-masts, and this could not very well be done till daylight. We proposed turning the cutter into a schooner or lugger, and happily, as we had saved most of our spars and canvas, we expected to have no great difficulty in getting sufficient sail on her to navigate with ease the poor little closely-shorn craft.

I have often had in my naval career to pass through nights of toil and anxiety, and this gave every promise of being one of that character. In a few hours we had gathered in all our ruffled feathers, or, in other words, our masts and spars and sails and rigging; and having stowed them along the decks as best we could, there we lay floating helplessly like a log on the water. Not having discarded my suspicions of the polacca-brig, notwithstanding my fatigue I felt no inclination to go to sleep. I now was left in charge of the deck while Porpoise and the rest of my messmates turned in, all standing. I walked the deck for some time, ever and anon turning my gaze upward to the dark blue vault of heaven glittering with a thousand stars, each but a centre of some mighty system, each more complex and marvellous, probably, than our own. I thought of the all-potent Being who made them as well as all the wondrous specimens of animal life which dwell on this globe we call our own, and my heart swelled with gratitude to Him who had preserved me and my shipmates from the danger to which we had been exposed. My spirit, as I thought, seemed to take its flight through the calm atmosphere, and to wander far far away among those distant spheres. How long it was away I know not. I was not conscious of the existence of my body on the surface of the globe. A splash aroused me from my reveries. It was caused by a fish leaping out of its liquid home to avoid some monster of the deep wishing to make a supper off it. It called me back to earth and things earthly. My first impulse was to cast my eye round the horizon. It was rather a circumscribed one at that hour of darkness. Once I made the full circuit and could see nothing. I took a few more turns on deck, and again I swept my eye round the watery circle more slowly than before. As I reached the south-eastern point of the heavens I was certain I saw a dark object. I rubbed my eyes. The sails of a vessel appeared before me, rising up like a thin dark pencil-line against the sky. I wetted my fingers and held up my hand. The cold struck it on that side. Whatever she might be she was well to windward of us. I took the night-glass, which hung on brackets just inside the companion-hatch. She was still too far off to enable me to make out what she was. I had not, however, forgotten my suspicions of the polacca. The stranger was evidently approaching us. If she was the Greek, her crew would scarcely resist the temptation of attempting to plunder us. Still I felt that my suspicions were almost absurd, and I did not like to arouse my friends without some better grounds for my fears. I, however, felt it would be wise not to run the risk of being taken altogether unprepared. I therefore went up alongside old Snow – so we called him, though he was young enough to be old Sleet’s son. I was not long in waking him up to the proper pitch of caution by narrating a variety of stories about pirates and slavers and savages, and such like gentry, with a due admixture of instances where people from carelessness were caught napping and lost their lives.