A bad penny

THE two ships of war were manœuvring that June afternoon in awful silence, on the blue waters of Massachusetts Bay. Each crew stood at quarters ready to send the deadly broadsides at the rival frigate when the word was given. No land was in sight, Boston Light being six leagues away, and the two ships in the centre of the circle of rippling water were watched only by the sea-gulls and the broad eye of the sun. The Chesapeake was coming down very fast on the Shannon, under top-sails and jib, and the British ship was lying to under top-sail, top-gallant sails, jib, and spanker. Cheever and James, high perched in the mizzen-top, clutched their muskets tightly as they watched the great white ensign of the ship float on the breeze, bearing the legend “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights.”

The ill-assorted crew of the Chesapeake had taken their stations and every man was ready for the fight, which must be sharp and murderous, whether the meteor flag of England or the starry banner was to be struck. It was late in the afternoon now, and the hours which had passed since the Chesapeake weighed anchor at noon, seemed like ages to the boy in the mizzen-top.

Midshipman Randolph, in command, was cheery enough, and had told James, as they sailed down Boston Bay, of his service on the Constitution, of her victory over the Guerrière, and her marvellous escape from the British fleet in the Sound.

“The Shannon is keeping a close luff,” cried Randolph. “See her maintop-sail shiver. We can get the weather-gauge on her easy enough. Look, now we are getting up our foresail and going straight for her starboard quarter; Lawrence will go under her stern, rake her, and engage her in the quarter. In a quarter of an hour you’ll see the splinters fly, my boys.”

On the Yankee ship tore before the fresh breeze, with the great ensign flying, while the Shannon waited doggedly the attack. Even the midshipman stopped his chatter as the moment of the first broadside approached.

The Chesapeake, when within fifty yards of her opponent’s starboard quarter, luffed up and squared her main-yard, and now the two rivals were almost alongside. A few minutes more of awful silence, while the two ships forged ahead together, and then James saw a flame shoot out from the starboard side of the Shannon, and at once the broadsides of both ships roared at each other. The boy felt every nerve in his body tingle, as the storm broke the awful calm.

Below him was a cloud of smoke and splinters, and as the smoke cleared away he saw the men working their guns, and dark forms lying by the wheel in ghastly pools of blood. And so the cannons thundered at each other gloriously for five minutes, “hot gun-lip kissing gun,” when the damage to the Chesapeake’s rigging caused her to come up into the wind somewhat, so as to expose her quarter to a terrible broadside, which beat in her stern posts and swept the men away like flies from the after guns. Then came a loud explosion on the American ship’s quarter-deck, and the flames swept along the deck from the foremast to the mizzen-mast. The dense smoke blinded and choked the men in the tops.

Meanwhile the crippled ship had stern-way on and began to pay off, and the two frigates fell aboard of each other, the Chesapeake’s quarter pressing on the Shannon’s side just forward the starboard main chains, and the ships were kept in this position by the Shannon’s anchor catching in the Chesapeake’s quarter-post.

“We are going to board them,” cried Randolph.

“Most likely they will us,” said a surly seaman; “we have had the worst of it so far.”

“Silence!” shouted Randolph.

The seaman was right; Captain Broke, when the Shannon exposed her quarter, ran forward, and seeing his foes flinching from the quarter-deck guns, ordered the ships to be linked together, the firing to cease, and the boarders to be called.

His boatswain set about fastening the vessels together, though his right arm was hacked off by a blow from a Yankee cutlass.

Just then Lieutenant Ludlow fell mortally wounded on the Chesapeake, and Lawrence himself on the quarter-deck, fatally conspicuous in his full-dress uniform and commanding stature, was shot down. He fell down and was carried below, exclaiming, “Don’t give up the ship!”

Now from the tops of both vessels the fire became hot, and as the smoke blew away from the two linked ships, James saw the British Captain Broke at the head of his men, stepping from the Shannon’s gangway rail on to the muzzle of the Chesapeake’s after carronade. The boy aimed at the British captain and fired; but missed. In a second Captain Broke, followed by about twenty men, jumped on the Chesapeake’s quarter-deck, and some of the crew of the American vessel, the foreign mercenaries and some of the raw natives, deserted their quarters. The Portuguese boatswain’s mate removed the gratings of the berth-deck and ran below, followed by many of the crew.

The loss of Lawrence and Ludlow deprived the deck of leaders at the critical moment of the fight, and the mixed elements in the crew could not stand up without a leader, against the élan of the enemy’s boarders.

At this despairing juncture, the church militant came to the front. The chaplain, Mr. Livermore, stood alone on the quarter-deck, in front of the boarders, and advancing, the parson fired his pistol into the boarding crew and in return nearly had his arm hewed off by a sword-stroke.

“My God, look at Livermore!” cried Berry. “Lawrence and Ludlow must be dead. Where’s the bugler, the coward? Is there no one to rally the men?”

The boarders, after the chaplain’s noble resistance, stopped for a moment until they were joined by the rest of the Shannon’s boarders. “Now, let them have it,” cried Berry, “a volley!—are you ready,—fire!”

The volley told on the huddled mass of boarders and two officers fell. “That’s right,” cried the midshipman, “but it will be our turn next. Load your guns, my men, and give it to them before we are blown to bits. They are pointing a Long Tom at us from the Shannon. Pick off all you can before they fire it.”

As he spoke, the gallant officer, pierced by a bullet from the Shannon’s maintop, plunged from the top and fell heavily over on the deck below. James instinctively assumed the command of the top. “Now, boys,” he cried, “the marines are making a stand in the upper deck.”

The next instant a shot from the Shannon’s Long Tom crashed through the mizzen-top, and James and the survivors made for the shrouds, to descend to the upper deck. As they descended, several muskets were discharged at them, but without effect.

Below, Lieutenant Budd now for the first time learned that the English had boarded; from the upper deck men came crowding down.

“Chesapeake’s men, follow me!” cried the gallant officer.

But, shame to say, the foreigners and the green hands held back, though a dozen brave fellows jumped to follow him. Up they rushed after the Lieutenant to the spar-deck, and fell, with the fury of brave men who break away from coward associates, upon the British as they came along the gangway.

This brave handful, reinforced by Cheever, James, and other mizzen-top men, held in check the victorious Shannons, killing two of them; and Cheever saw the Lieutenant pierced by a boarding-pike and thrown down the main hatchway. As the Chesapeake’s survivors stood battling for their lives with the desperation of animals at bay, Lieutenant Ludlow, stricken to death, struggled upon deck, followed by three seamen.

“We shall not give up the ship,” cried the dying man.

A sabre descended upon his head and he spoke no more.

Hardly fifteen minutes had elapsed since the two gallant frigates had begun action, and the Chesapeake was almost in the complete possession of the enemy. In the forecastle, a few seamen and marines stood fighting on the upper deck; the few survivors stood together, firm in their determination not to give up the ship before their lives.

In this desperate struggle, Tom Cheever, brandishing a pike, stood shoulder to shoulder with James. Next him, a marine with a clubbed musket in air, and on the other side James, with his midshipman’s cutlass, while behind stood eight seamen armed with pikes and cutlasses. After their slight repulse of the Shannon’s boarding crew they fell back, and for a moment the fighting ceased as the determined little body of Americans stood closer together. Men there were among them who had helped to doff the Guerrière’s royal ensign, and they were desperate at this awful disaster to their flag.

“Better to die with the ‘old man,’” they thought.

“It’s good-by, James, my boy,” hoarsely whispered Cheever. “I’ve dragged you down with me.”

Through the boy’s head the hot blood jumped bearing the joy of the fight. He grasped his dirk the firmer. “We shall die for our country’s honor,” he cried.

Then the overpowering force of the boarding crew, led by Broke, closed in about the devoted remnant of the Americans. With brilliant personal courage the Captain led his men; and James rushed to meet him. Behind Cheever followed close, thrusting himself in front of the boy to shield him as best he might.

“Surrender!” cried Broke.

“Never!” cried Cheever, thrusting at him with his pike.

Captain Broke parried the blow with his sword and cut at his opponent, laying open his head. James, seeing that his uncle was blinded by the blood, rushed in to save him, but Cheever thrust the boy back of him and stood in front of him as a lioness might do to save her whelp.

The little group of Americans were resisting stubbornly the attack; a tall marine crashed his musket’s butt upon a burly seaman who had rushed to Broke’s side, and at the same moment Cheever cut down the British captain, and would have killed him had not another cutlass pierced the American’s breast. He fell heavily backwards, and as he did so a heavy stroke of a British cutlass felled James to the deck.

The assailing party fell back for an instant before the wild courage of the Americans, and then closed in upon them. The twelve men lay in each other’s blood on the spot where they had rallied. A couple of shots were fired up from below, and the British fired a volley or two down the hatchway. All resistance was then at an end and the colors of the Chesapeake were struck.

When James came to his senses, he found himself crowded with a dozen prisoners in a small dark hole between decks. They were lying on an old sail, and outside the door a sentry was pacing. The boy’s head ached wofully from the cutlass wound, but fortunately the blow had been a glancing one. The great flow of blood had saved the boy’s life; for in the mad rush of the British, he would have certainly been despatched had not his wound been so severe that he passed for dead. He was, though he did not then know it, the only survivor of the gallant little band who, driven to bay, had held the Shannon’s boarding party.

His companions in this dismal captivity were perfectly quiet, depressed by defeat, and some of them seemed to be asleep.

“The ship is taken?” asked James, to whom the brief quarter of an hour of carnage seemed like a nightmare.

“Ay, it is,” replied the midshipman next him, “and we are bound on her to Halifax, prisoners of war.”

“Is Lawrence dead?”

“No; but fatally wounded; and so is Lieutenant Ludlow, and poor Bullard and White. The decks are like shambles.”

“And my uncle?”

“I don’t know your uncle, my lad.”

“He was in the mizzen-top’s crew. We made the last stand.”

“Then he has passed in the number of his mess. You are the only one left of those brave men. I saw them pull you out from under the bodies, and they chucked you in here when we were put in. I did not know that you were alive till you spoke just then. I thought that you might be so lucky as to be dead. Oh, if our fore-rigging had not been shot away, we should have given a better account of ourselves. Poor Lawrence!”

Then there was silence again in the strait, dark hole; but the creaking of the ship and the hurrying feet on deck told that the proud frigate was on her way to the enemy’s strong-hold at Halifax.

And James lay, with confused thoughts of the strange man, his uncle, dying like a hero for his country’s honor,—the weak, perverse man who had so ill guarded his own.