CHAPTER XLV.

WE SAIL FOR EUROPE.

Estremera was a smart little Andalusian, with large whiskers, which he curled with great care, and he wore his black hair shorn short. He had little gold rings in his ears, and the red point of a cigarito perpetually gleamed between his teeth. He wore a broad-brimmed straw-hat, from which a scarlet ribbon floated, and he was entirely clad in a spotless suit of white linen—jacket, waist-coat, and trousers. The ample collar of a shirt that was broadly striped with red and white was folded over his shoulders. He was about to speak, when Antonio, who was supported by two of the crew, suddenly exclaimed to one of them—

"Benito Ojeda—hah! Don't you remember me, Benito?"

"What, Antonio, is this you?" replied the seaman; "the best Cubano that ever sailed past the Morro light."

"Do you know this man, Benito?" asked the captain.

"Right well, senor, and will bear witness to his character," replied the sailor bluntly.

"Much value your evidence will be," said Estremera, contemptuously, "when you are known to be the greatest picaroon on board. Come, esta, senor," he added to me, "you are welcome."

"Muchos gratias, senor capitano," replied I, bowing low, as I stepped forward.

"But what in the name of mischief am I to do to provision you all?" said Estremera, with perplexity.

"After what I have endured, senor capitano, a very little food will suffice for me."

"Were you ever in Spain?"

"No, senor."

"How, then——"

"Oh! one may speak Spanish without having been in Spain," said I, smiling.

"Of course—of course. But what is this?" he added, on perceiving the wounds of Antonio; "Caramba! have you been fighting—killing one another?"

"Senor," said Hislop, "this is the picaroon of whom I told you—he who slew our captain and shipmates, and whom we thrust overboard; but who, as if by a miracle, reached the island of Alphonso before us."

"Bueno! And what more?"

"On seeing your ship come to anchor outside the reef," said I, with some anxiety for the issue of the affair, "he endeavored to kill me; and but for the sword with which I was armed, he had assuredly done so."

"To kill you—santos!—and why?"

"Lest I should accuse him of those crimes which he had committed in the Eugenie, and which so many of her surviving crew, now here on board, are ready to substantiate."

"And now in the name of justice, senor capitano, I demand that he be strung up at once at the foreyard-arm!" said Hislop.

"Demonio! I have neither the power nor the will to do that, before all these accusations have been inquired into and proved; and there is no chance of our meeting with a Spanish ship of war in these seas," replied the captain.

There was a pause, during which José Estremera scratched his right ear with an air of perplexity; and the aspect of Antonio, as he drooped between his friend, Benito Ojeda, and another seaman, was truly ghastly in the moonlight.

"Take that man below, and have his wounds looked to," said Captain Estremera to some of the crew. "Senor Hislop, I wish to speak with you alone on these matters; and meanwhile, Senor el Gobernador," he added, to the Dutch gentleman, "will excuse us."

He and Marc Hislop now retired aft to the taffrail, over which they leant and conversed, while the most of the crew went below with Antonio, who would no doubt give them his version of the story; while I remained near the binnacle, anxiously waiting the result of this conference, and watching the changing features of the fertile shore, the curved bay, the foam-covered coral reef, and every thicket with which I was so familiar—the palms, the chestnuts, and bananas—as the great Spanish merchantman swung slowly round at her anchor, when the soft night wind veered from east to south.

Silence soon reigned fore and aft, for there was none on deck but some of the passengers, smoking over the taffrail, the anchor-watch amid ships, and some of the Eugenie's men loitering about the forecastle-bitts, that they might have an opportunity of speaking with me before turning in.

It would appear that, being loath to add to the number of his crew, who were a mixed and somewhat mutinous band of Spaniards, Cuban Creoles, and lascars, and having still a long voyage before him, he offered to rid us of Antonio, and supply us with muskets and ammunition, some medicines and cooking utensils, some old sails and spars wherewith to erect a comfortable hut, and to leave us all on the island of Alphonso, to the chance of being taken off by the next passing ship, which very possibly might be a British one.

My heart died within me on hearing this strange and most unexpected proposal.

"How would you rid us of Antonio, senor?" asked Hislop, gravely; "do you mean by hanging him?"

"Oh no!—by taking him with me to Spain."

"For what purpose?"

"To have him tried before the regidores at Cadiz."

"While all the witnesses are left behind?" resumed the Scotchman, with surprise.

"Demonio—that is true!" said the captain, scratching his ear again, for a partiality to his countryman was evident, and a little use of the knife is not deemed a very heinous crime in the land of Don Quixote.

"You can all work?" said he, in another tone.

"All—all can hand, reef, and steer."

"Bueno—one English sailor is worth a dozen Lascars; so if it were not for breaking an agreement, I would maroon them all ashore there. Hanging your Cubano might be very useful to terrify some of my crew who are very discontented; but I have not the authority to do so—and the greater is the pity, as I shall have to feed him, and there is no use in feeding up a fellow merely to hang him. Caramba! there is nothing for it but keeping you all until we reach Teneriffe;—I shall be compelled to run into Palma or Santa Cruz for fresh water, at all events; and when there, I shall leave the whole affair in the hands of Senor, the Captain-General of the Canaries."

"And meanwhile the Cubano——"

"Shall be put in the bilboes in the cable-tier, as he must be too dangerous a picaroon to leave afloat among a ship's company like mine."

A berth was prepared for Hislop and me in the steerage, while the rest of our shipmates were berthed among the Spaniards and dirty Lascars, neither of whom were much to their liking.

Food and wine were immediately provided for me. I partook of them greedily, and believe that, but for the new strength they gave me, I should have sunk altogether.

Old Tom Lambourne, Ned Carlton, and Probart, the carpenter, now rejoined me and expressed great discontent that Antonio was not "run up at once," adding the satisfaction with which they would all have "walked aft with the line, had he been at the other end of it," and prophesying evil to the ship and her crew if he was kept aboard.

"But what is the captain to do?" asked Probart; "'tain't no use attempting to kill that Cubano—he is either Davy Jones or the Devil!"

"Or Whirlwind Tom, as puts maggots into the midshipmen's nuts," said Lambourne, "and makes a sound ship leak, nobody knows how or why; sours the burgoo forward and the wine aft; makes many a poor fellow lose his hold when laying out on the yard-arm in a dark night, and works all manner o' mischief aboard."

"If he ain't Whirlwind Tom, out and out," added Probart, solemnly, and with increasing energy, as if by describing their own fears they wished to apologize for their desertion of me, "if he ain't Whirlwind Tom, I say he's something as bad, and I wish I was clear o' this here craft, before he works us all a mischief."

"I think he's the ghost of some old buccaneer that's been hung at Port Royal, or marooned on the Albuquerque Keys long ago," said Lambourne. "He has already found an old shipmate aboard, and may I never see the Nore again if they won't be up to something sly before long: for that fellow has sin enough on his soul to sink a seventy-four!"

The San Ildefonso was a beautiful ship, and very man-o'-war-like in her general aspect.

Her decks were clean and spotless. Every rope was tidily belayed and coiled away in its place, and the brass mountings of her binnacle lamps, of her wheel and capstan, were all polished till, like the twelve brass nines she carried, they shone with the brightness of burnished gold.

She was thoroughly Spanish, though—for all the food on board, even to the cabin biscuits, had the flavor of garlic; and every thing else, even to the red and yellow flag at the gaff peak, was redolent of Havana cigars.

Her cargo was valuable, and consisted of the most choice productions of Java, such as sugar, coffee, pepper, indigo, and tobacco, with spices of all kinds.

Among her cabin passengers she had the Dutch Governor of Surabaya, a province of Java, which is bounded on the north by the sea of that name, and on the east by the Straits of Madura. He was a retired soldier, and latterly had been a planter, and was now returning home to Holland with a vast quantity of luggage, in which, as Hislop informed me, according to the rumor current about the forecastle, an almost fabulous amount of guilders was packed in canvas bags.

"And with a crew so mixed as ours," he added, "it is the reverse of pleasant to have such constant whispering about it, when we have to run along the wildest portion of the west coast of Africa."

For three days the San Ildefonso remained at anchor a few fathoms off the reef, while her crew took every thing of value from the waterlogged brig that lay on the western shore.

Her iron cables and remaining anchor, her copper bolts, and a log or two of mahogany, with some coils of Manilla rope, were brought on board. The poor fellow whose bones were hanging at the fore-channel, found a Christian grave, for he was buried near the rock which had the Spanish legend carved on it; and there Fra Anselmo, the Portuguese missionary, performed the funeral services of his church; and solemnly for the unknown dead, the prayer seemed to go up to Heaven from that lonely islet in the South Atlantic.

Then, to my joy, the boats were hoisted on board,—the topsails were cast loose, and preparations made for leaving Alphonso.

The windlass was manned, and I saw Marc Hislop with the rest, handspike in hand, heaving short on the anchor, in his anxiety to get under way.

"Heave, my lads,—heave and rally!" I heard him shout, as if he had an English crew under his orders, and wished them to work briskly.

The anchor was soon tripped, and the headyards were filled as she payed off; but too slowly for Hislop's sailor eyes, for he shouted again in English, which he was safe to use,—

"Sheet home, you lubbers! Oh, Rodney, how slow these jack-Spaniards are! I would rather have one of our own sort than a hundred of them. Never mind—all's one for that! I'll have my foot on a deck of good British oak ere long. Now the canvas fills—she's under way at last, and walks through the water like a brave and handsome craft as she is!"

Now the island of Alphonso began to recede; the tall trees lessened to shrubs, the great bluffs to little tufted rocks, while the arms of that old familiar bay seemed to close and blend with the shore, as we bore away to the northward before a fresh, fair southern breeze.

Though I detested the island and all its features, yet I could not but watch them with interest, for it was a shore I should never see again.

The evening was lovely, and the blue waves of the ocean rolled in shining ripples which seemed to flow along with us.

Hislop and I stood on the forecastle leaning over the lee bow, and watching the white foam bubbling under her forefoot, as the sharp cutwater cleft the sea, till the rising spray began to sparkle about the catheads; then the brine-dripping anchors were fished up to the gunwale, and finally hoisted on board.

Fresher came the breeze, and now, as the studding-sail booms were rigged out to port and starboard, the ship flew through an ocean crimsoned by the setting sun, and I heard Hislop, as he sat on the bowsprit, singing in the lightness of his heart,—

Gaily we go o'er the salt blue seas,
    And the waves break white before us;
Our canvas aloft swells out in the breeze;
    And home points the pennant o'er us.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THE HOMEWARD VOYAGE.

My heart beat happily; I was no longer a lonely maroon, but on the high road to home and Old England.

We had several days of the finest tropical weather, and they passed unmarked by a greater incident than seeing a shoal of dolphins, sparkling as they surged through the brine; the silvery flying-fish leap from one green watery slope to another, while the dark crooked fin of the stealthy shark glided as usual in the trough of the sea between; a piece of weedy drift-wood with Mother Cary's chickens or albatrosses floating near it, or perhaps at the horizon, the topsails of a vessel hull-down, appearing for a time like white or dusky specks, according to the position of the sun.

The captain of the San Ildefonso perceiving that Marc Hislop and I were great friends kindly placed us in the same watch.

As for Antonio the Cubano, we never went near him if we could avoid it. He was placed in the cable tier, and for more complete security, in the bilboes, which are iron shackles that confine the feet. However, we daily heard from the surgeon, and from Fra Anselmo, who was somewhat skilled in surgery, and who undertook his cure bodily and mentally, that the wound under the right armpit had proved slight, though the lung had escaped narrowly, but that the other in the breast had penetrated the fleshy portion of the heart, and was a very dangerous one. The friar added, "that the Cubano was not one of those men who are easily killed, and thus he would recover rapidly."

We also heard that Antonio was well cared for, as he had discovered one or two friends among the crew, such as the seaman Benito Ojeda, a most villainous-looking, beetle-browed, and squat little Catalonian, who seemed to be the worst character on board, and was engaged in perpetual quarrels.

"As we approach land," said the friar, "it will be necessary to have both these fellows well watched."

"Why?" asked Captain Estremera.

"Lest they plot an escape or mischief for some of their companeros de viage."

Hislop gave me a quick glance as the old Portuguese padre said this; for, of all the persons on board, we had the most reason to dread this fettered fiend getting his hands and feet loose again.

Thus, in our berth in the steerage, I was frequently haunted by visions of wreck and danger—of sharks opening their jaws to devour me—of being thrown overboard—of being again marooned on that wild and lonely island, where no sound of life met the ear, save the chafing of the waves upon the shore, the hum of insects, and the rustle of the falling leaves in the solitary woods.

But chiefly Antonio was ever before me, like a tormenting spirit or the monster-man of "Frankenstein."

I was ever engaged in fighting with him, or escaping from him; and so strong was this idea, that I always kept by my side, at night, the sword with which I had wounded him when he attempted to cut me off before reaching Hislop's boat.

Then I would lie awake for hours thinking of the home to which the ship was bearing me, but which I might be fated never to see, and watching from my berth the square patch of blue and star-studded sky through the open hatchway, listening the while to the hum of the wind through the mizzen rigging, the pattering of the long rows of reef-points on the sails, and at times, when looking up, I could see the little round trucks that seemed to pierce the starry welkin. Then, when about to drop asleep, I would start to instant wakefulness, lest the feet of some one, coming down the ladder close by, might be those of Antonio—of the assassin escaped from the bilboes!

One evening Hislop and I were in the second dog-watch; we had just had our coffee below with the captain, the old Dutch Governor of Surabaya, Fra Anselmo, and other passengers, and had come on deck as four bells struck.

There was merely wind enough to keep the canvas full aloft, and not a cloud was in the sky. The sea around us had a strange tint like apple green, that paled off into faint blue at the horizon, and the stately Spanish ship, when the wind came in puffs upon the beam, careened gracefully under her cloud of canvas, between us and the sky, as we walked to and fro aft the mainmast.

Seated under an awning which was rigged above the topgallant bulwarks aft, the passengers were enjoying their cigars, the men were all in groups about the deck forward, knotting, splicing, and conversing. A gang of the copper-colored Lascars were squatted on their hams near the hawse-hole in the weather bow, all smoking one hubble-bubble, which was made of a large cocoa-nut, and which they passed from one dingy moustachioed mouth to another in the most free-and-easy way imaginable.

Each wore a dirty turban or fez; their blue tunics and brick-red trousers were girt at the waist by a tattered sash, in which the deadly and double-edged Malay creese was stuck; and this costume gave them an aspect as picturesque as the swarthy groups of muscular Spanish seamen, in their brightly-striped linen shirts, and with their heads furnished with Barcelona handkerchiefs, long scarlet caps, or twine nets to confine the masses of their coal-black hair.

Suddenly there was a shout forward, and we found that the squat little sailor, Benito Ojeda, when engaged in raising the foretopmast-staysail out of the bowsprit netting, in which it is usually stowed, had fallen overboard. Three sharks, which had been following the vessel for a week past, would soon have sealed his fate, but fortunately he caught hold of one of the martingale back ropes, and holding on desperately, swung above the spray that boiled under the bows.

Hislop skilfully caught him in the bight of a rope, and he was hauled in hand over hand, heels foremost, looking alternately as white as a sheet and as red as a boiled lobster.

"I don't think you've done the ship much service, Master Hislop, in fishing that ere customer aboard again," said Tom Lambourne, in a low voice.

"Why so, Tom?" asked the mate.

"Because he's the chum of that ugly Cubanny; and a down-headed dog he is, that is always skulking fore-and-aft when off duty, whispering to one, twisting cigarittys with another, and brewing mischief among the whole crew."

Hislop looked round at the squat and forbidding little Espanol, whose head, shoulders, and general bulk were so great that he looked like a big man cut off by the knees; but Benito turned sullenly away, and, without a word of thanks to his preserver, joined a gang who were hoisting the flying jib.

By the association of ideas, this sail made Hislop and me think of the spectral ship we had seen when on the island of Alphonso, and which had so terrified our men.

"I have not a doubt," said he, "that it was but the shadow of this vessel—the San Ildefonso—we saw on that night. The captain permitted me to examine the ship's log, and I found that at the same hour she was running upon a wind, and close hauled; that her cabin lamp was broken by an accident, that the watch on deck had just shaken out her jib, and by some accident let the jib-sheet fly, and that the mate ordered the spanker to be hauled more aft, that she might answer her helm better. Could we have stronger proofs of what I then asserted, that what we saw was but the dioptrical refraction of a vessel under canvas elsewhere?"

"It was a startling episode," said I, though his meaning was not very clear to me; "thus we need not be surprised that foremast-men like Tom Lambourne and others will maintain to the end of their days that it was the Flying Dutchman they saw, and nothing else!"

"Very likely; but according to tradition, Vanderdecken is seldom seen in these seas," replied Hislop, laughing; "he is always cruising in Table Bay, or knocking about in the seas off the Cape of Good Hope, as any old salt will readily tell you. He may generally be known by his carrying a press of sail, royals, sky-scrapers, and every thing, when other craft can scarcely carry steering canvas or double-reefed courses; and he always sends off a boat with letters for Amsterdam, addressed to people who have been in their graves for two hundred years or more. Some of these letters are addressed to William II., Prince of Orange (father of our William III.), who died in 1660, and are offering him five thousand guilders and as many Indian mohurs, payable at the bank of Amsterdam, if he will grant them a pardon."

"For what?" I asked.

"Crimes committed on board. Other letters are addressed by the crew to their relations, in places that no longer exist, such as the Haarlem gate and Cinghel-street; and these letters are alike dangerous to take or refuse."

"Why?"

"Because they bring mischief if left on board, and if refused, a typhoon comes on and sinks you."

"He is a pleasant craft to be overhauled by, certainly!"

"No one knows the origin of the legend," said Hislop; "some say she was a Dutch Indiaman, returning laden with great wealth, when her voyage was arrested by dreadful acts of piracy and murder which were committed by her crew. To punish them, Heaven sent on board a pestilence, which reduced them to a small number of wasted and worn spectres, who sailed from port to port offering all their ill-gotten gold as the price of rest, of shelter, of prayers for their sinful souls, and burial for their shrunken bodies; but they can never die; and thus from every haven and harbor, from every shore and town, their dreadful aspect, and the unexplained plague which devoured, without destroying them, even as the vulture preyed upon the vitals of Prometheus without their being consumed, always procured their expulsion, till finding they were shunned by all the world, they were compelled at last to cruise off Table Bay, the scene of their crimes, where their spectre ship, always the precursor of a storm, must haunt that sea until the day of doom; as Scott has it,—

"——that phantom ship, whose form
Shoots like a meteor though the storm,
When the dark scud comes driving hard,
And lowered is every topsail yard,
And canvas wove in earthly looms
No more to brave the storm presumes;
THEN, 'mid the war of sea and sky,
Top and top-gallant hoisted high,
Full spread and crowded every sail,
The Dæmon Frigate braves the gale;
And well the doomed spectators know
The harbinger of wreck and woe!"

"I have often thought," continued Hislop, whose memory was singularly retentive, "that the story may have originated in the queer old nautical idea of a downhill current, by which any kind of craft that doubled Cape Bojadore, on the western coast of Africa, could never return; for such was the fixed idea of all mariners prior to the voyage of Bartolomeo Diaz, in 1486, and the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. For this downhill current was supposed to run south from the equator; and hence ships, however close-hauled, might beat and tack against it in vain; for an adverse wind blew forever in the same direction, till their spars rotted, their sails were frittered into rags, and their rigging wasted away—till their seams gaped and opened, and they sank into the sea a worn-out wreck."

With conversations such as these, combining amusement with instruction, this intelligent young sailor was wont to beguile our watches, while the San Ildefonso sped on her homeward track.

We recrossed the line, and each successive morning I hailed the sun with fresh pleasure, as we drew nearer the latitude of Europe; but we could still sniff the hot wind that came from the deserts of Africa; and, ere long, the more experienced eyes on board began to discover to the eastward a blink in the sky, as that peculiar appearance of the atmosphere which indicates the locality of land is named by seamen.

CHAPTER XLVII.

A MUTINY.

From time to time Lambourne made Hislop and me rather uneasy, by expressing suspicions of a collusion among the men forward.

The whispers of the treasure alleged to be in possession of the old ex-Governor of Surabaya, and the desire of Ojeda and one or two others to save Antonio from the punishment that would certainly overtake him, if we reached Teneriffe or signalled a Spanish ship of war, formed an unpleasant conjunction of ideas.

We, the survivors of the crew of the poor Eugenie, knew that if any revolt broke out among this mixed gang of dingy rascals, Spaniards, Creoles, and Lascars, our fate would be sealed. We were among the first who would assuredly be knocked on the head.

There must be great truth in the maxim, that "no human being ever came near another without influencing them for good or for evil."

On board the San Ildefonso it would seem that Antonio found all the materials for evil ready to his hand, as more than half the crew were ragamuffins "engaged by the run," as the phrase is at sea. But the surmises of Lambourne were much too vague for us to give them any tangible form as yet; and Antonio, our chief object of dread, was still secure in the bilboes in the cable-tier.

He had nearly recovered from his wounds. I saw him only once below, and, in his impotent wrath, he ground his teeth and spat at me like a baited polecat.

We saw nothing of the island of St. Mathew, so the next land we expected to sight would be the isles off the Cape de Verd; but the wind continued to blow freshly and steadily from the west, and as José Estremera made no allowance for current-sailing, the setting in of the sea carried us nearer the coast of Africa than was either necessary or desirable.

Thus one evening, we heard the cry of "Tierra!" from the look-out man in the crow's nest, and, soon after, a low blue and wavy streak on the lee-bow was declared to be the coast of Africa.

Though sea and sky were reddened by the setting sun, the rising coast wore a tint of the deepest indigo. It seemed rather flat and low; but, as we crept in shore, its features changed and became more broken. Thickets of strange trees were discernible along the sea-margin, and then mountains rose in the distant background, with the sunset lingering in gold on their summits.

Night fell, and the ship's head was kept away a few points more to the west; and when day broke we were all on deck betimes to greet the land.

We found the ship off Poison Island, which lies far northward of Sierra Leone, and adjoins the territory of the Felletahs. Many of the natives came off in their carved and painted canoes (which were propelled by paddles shaped like shovels), offering fruit, vegetables, and bananas for sale; and these Africans would courageously shoot their light boats right across the forefoot of the ship while still under way.

At last the mainyard was backed for a few minutes, while José Estremera bought the entire contents of a large canoe for a few empty bottles, some iron rings, and the links of an old chain.

Some of these craft were rowed by Felletah women, and I could perceive that though deeply tanned by the sun, their faces were pleasant and oval, their noses aquiline, and their hair black and glossy.

All these tawny rowers wore striped cloth tunics, which reached to their ankles, and had their necks and arms loaded with beads of glass or coral, and many of them had Spanish dollars attached to their ear-rings.

A gun was fired as a warning for all boats to keep off, lest some accident might ensue; and it was amusing to see the consternation of the poor Felletahs, and with what speed they paddled away toward the shore.

Orders were now issued to lay the ship's head nearer the wind for the Cape de Verd, and to bend the cable to the working anchor, that it might be ready for any emergency; and these directions had the unexpected effect of bringing matters to a crisis between our captain and the friends of Antonio.

They assembled in sullen groups about the deck, and clustered out upon the booms, where they muttered and whispered, and frequently pointed to the shore and to the native boats that were paddling into the sandy coves and wooded creeks.

Tom Lambourne, whom Captain Estremera soon discovered to be one of the best seamen on board, had gone below, with one or two more, to rouse the cable out of the tier, when, to his surprise, he found the place filled with Spanish sailors and Lascars, all talking at once, and in full conference with the fettered Cubana!

He was roughly ordered to sheer off and let the cable lie, while one or two drew their knives in a threatening manner.

"They are up to something at last!" said he to Carlton; "so it is high time for the captain and his cabin passengers to look out for a squall, or that old Dutchman's dollars may change hands at the capstan-head before night."

Hislop and I had dined with the captain, and were lingering over some wine of Alicant, fruit, and cigars, listening to a dispute about some very irrelevant matter between the old Governor of Surabaya and Fra Anselmo, when the ship's steward came to say that a sailor wished to speak with us in haste.

Tom was admitted, and bluntly stated at once his conviction that a plot had been laid by Antonio and others to seize the ship and run her ashore. If such were not their intentions, why had they refused to let him bend the cable to the working-anchor?

Hislop hurriedly repeated Tom's statement in Spanish, adding thereto his own ideas and suspicions on the subject.

The old priest and the rich Dutchman became seriously alarmed; while the olive visage of Captain Estremera grew dark as night with anger.

"Ave Maria!" said the priest, closing his snuffbox, and putting it hastily in his pocket.

At the same time the Dutch Governor started up to look for his sword.

"Seize my ship!—A mutiny!—What can their object be?" stammered the captain.

"With some," replied Hislop, "merely to have a buccaneering ramble ashore among the Felletahs—with others, to marry and settle for a time; but with all, to have a scene of plunder and devastation, to aid in the escape of Antonio, and to murder his English shipmates."

At first the captain was inclined to doubt the whole affair; but a strange noise was now heard in the forepart of the ship, and Manuel Gautier, the chief mate, came hurriedly down to report that some of the men had taken the iron balls from the shot-rack at the main-hatchway, and were rolling them about the deck; and that, when he remonstrated with Benito Ojedo, there was a rush made aft, with cries of "Throw him overboard!"

On hearing this sudden confirmation of Tom's statement, Estremera started from the table, and buckled on a cutlass that hung on the after-bulkhead; and then, with the brevity, but characteristic taciturnity of a Spaniard, he proceeded to act with promptitude and determination, and instantly breaking open a case of ball-cartridges, began to distribute them.

"If so be there is a breeze on board, I'll make that Antonio dance Old Nick's hornpipe before it is over!" said Tom Lambourne, angrily.

"Fortunately, all the ship's muskets are below, I believe?" remarked Hislop.

"Si, senor. Twenty stand are on a rack in the steerage," replied Estremera. "Santos! gentlemen, we must work hard. Get all those arms into the cabin and load them. We have not a moment to lose!"

"Run on deck, Tom; they don't know that we are alarmed yet. Order all the Eugenie's men, all others you can depend on, aft. I fear ours are the only lads this poor Spanish skipper can rely on now!"

In less than five minutes we had all the muskets conveyed from the rack in the steerage into the cabin. We provided ourselves with ball-cartridges; and then Hislop and I, with Manuel Gautier, the mate; the old Dutch governor, the captain, and even Fra Anselmo, in his long black soutan (quoting "that the end justified the means") proceeded with all speed to load and cap the fire-arms.

Meanwhile, the rolling of the loose shot upon the deck overhead still continued, and to that noise was now added the hallooing of the Spanish crew and the screaming of the Lascars, as they proceeded together from one act of open insubordination and outrage to another.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

SEQUEL TO THE MUTINY.

There were on board the San Ildefonso ten survivors of the Eugenie, including myself; and fortunately for the ship at this crisis, one of us, Francis Probart, the carpenter, was at the wheel, and remained steadily at his post during all that ensued; for had the steering been relinquished for a moment, the vessel would have broached to, and her masts must have gone overboard.

The captain, with his three mates, his surgeon, and cabin passengers, and our men, made up twenty in all; so we prepared at once for defensive operations.

The wild hallooing increased with the thundering of the iron shot overhead, as they were bowled aft along the quarter-deck, smashing the grated stern seats, and rebounding against the taffrail, over which some of them tumbled into the sea.

"We're all here, sir,—Ned Carlton, Jack the cook, Warren, Chute, and even boy Bill; but we want arms," cried Tom Lambourne down the skylight.

"On deck, and at them!" said Hislop; and we rushed up the cabin stair, supplied each with two loaded muskets to arm our friends above.

At this moment the ship was running with a fine breeze, which was pretty well aft. She had several studding-sails set; and the extremely wide spread of her white canvas, which caught the sea-breeze one way, and the full yellow blaze of an African sunset the other, made me think—but the idea only flashed on me and was gone instantly—that if a tropical squall came on, while in contention with our own crew, our fate would soon be sealed by the elements.

She had every thing set, even to little triangular scrapers, rigged to a skysail pole above her royals; and all this cloud of canvas was glittering in the red and yellow light reflected from the sun and clouds.

But the evening was lovely; the waves were in reality shining in liquid light on the western quarter of the ocean, as the sun, "blood-red," to use a hackneyed term, dipping down past a succession of straight and horizontal crimson bars, sank slowly beyond what appeared to be the flaming edge of a watery world.

But we had no time for poetry, or for surveying the scene around us. That which was about to ensue within the bulwarks of the San Ildefonso was impressive and terrible enough!

"Hand us the muskets, gentlemen," said Ned Carlton, as we rushed up the companion ladder.

"Hurrah for the tools and the men to use them!" added Tom Lambourne, quoting some proverb, as the arms were promptly distributed; and to the number of twenty we formed a line across the quarter-deck, a little way aft the mizzenmast.

This was achieved just in time, for with loud yells of "Perros y ladrones!" (dogs and thieves!) "Muera José Estremera! Mueran los Inglesos!" a gang of yellow-visaged Spaniards armed with knives and handspikes, and yellower Lascars with their terrible creeses, rushed aft in two parties, one on the weather side of the ship, and another on her lee; but, on being suddenly confronted by the levelled barrels of twenty muskets, they paused and wavered, though continuing to shout and brandish their weapons.

"Here goes for a shot at Antonio!" said Lambourne, taking a deliberate aim at that person; but Fra Anselmo laid a hand on his arm, and besought him to pause.

"Don't spoil him outright for hanging," said Hislop; "I would rather have him with a rope at his neck, and all bearing a hand to run him up to the foreyard-arm, than shot dead like a sparrow."

"Come on," shouted our men; "come on, muzzle to muzzle! None of your lubberly stand-off work!"

"Fire at their legs, and simply disable as many of them as possible, but spare life," said Fra Anselmo, in broken English.

"Fire at their heads, kill as many as possible, and spare none, though you should leave the ship unmanned!" said Estremera, in Spanish.

Lambert fired!

He missed; and the ball, after shaving the side of the long-boat amidships, whistled into the sea far ahead, and Antonio uttered a fierce and derisive laugh, while the Lascars shrunk back with fear.

The enemy had not a single missile, for, most fortunately, all the loose shot for the ship's guns had been rolled aft, and lay in our rear.

While both parties paused, one irresolute to advance, the other to pour in their volley, I—being an old Eton bowler—resolved to make a wicket of the Cubano's legs. I took up a nine-pound shot, which lay with a score of others in the lee scuppers, and hurled it at him with all my strength.

He leaped aside nimbly, and escaped, while the shot bowled harmlessly along the deck. He rushed after it, doubtless with the intention of returning it to me with compound interest; but fortunately for me, at that moment Hislop, who had lost all patience, and was no doubt smarting under the memory of his wounds and of Antonio's past outrages, cried,—

"Fire a volley and fall on them, my lads, with the butt ends of your muskets!"

It might have been better policy, considering the superior number of the mutineers, for ten of us to have fired, and ten to have reserved their fire until the former reloaded; but Hislop's order was promptly responded to.

We all poured in a confused volley, and then rushed on, in the smoke, with clubbed muskets and a hearty English cheer.

There was a brief struggle, during which our men laid about them mercilessly, and knocked over the Spaniards like nine-pins; while I encountered one active and wiry old villain, the tindal of the Lascars, who rushed on me with his creese in his right hand, his body doubled, and his head bent down.

Charging him breast-high, the muzzle of my piece came crash upon the crown of his caput, which a scarlet fez failed to protect, and so I tumbled him against one of the brass nines to leeward.

On seeing this the whole of the Lascars, instead of coming to his rescue, fled down the fore-hatchway.

I gave the tindal another tap on the head to enforce quietness, and took away his creese.

"Help me to secure this rascal," cried I to our men; "he will be a surety for the other Lascars."

"I have him, sir, hard and fast, as if clenched in the dry nippers of a Jamaica land-crab," said Tom Lambourne; and, in a few seconds, he had the old copper-colored rogue seized by the hands and feet to one of the aftmost guns.

Then we rushed forward to share in the scuffle, which was soon ended; for just as Antonio, on seeing the turn matters had taken by the force of our superior arms, was about to spring overboard, Hislop struck him senseless by a blow from the butt-end of his musket, and flung him, like a bale of wool, upon the top of the Lascars, who crowded about the bottom of the fore-hatchway ladder.

"Ha, porpoise-face!" said he, fiercely, "I have brought you up with a round turn at last!"

One or two Spaniards now fled up the fore-rigging, whence they implored us not to shoot them; but the squat marinero, Benito Ojeda, and all the rest, were driven down the fore-hatch, where they crowded at the foot of the ladder, treading the Lascars under foot, growling and menacing us with their knives and creeses, and threatening to set fire to the ship,—a threat which they were quite capable of fulfilling.

On the deck lay one Lascar dead, and two Lascars and one Spaniard who were wounded in the legs. In his death agony the first had driven three inches of his sharp creese into the deck, when the blade broke off.

Probart was still at the wheel, steering the ship so steadily that not a cloth shivered aloft; but night was coming on, and as she was covered with canvas, to reduce it was necessary, but first the mutinous crew must be crushed. To Probart, as a spectator, the conflict must have presented an exciting scene; for, had we been beaten, his fate as an Englishman would soon have been sealed.

José Estremera, who had long been captain of a Spanish slaver, was inexorable!

"Manuel Gautier," cried he to the chief mate, "cast loose that gun in the weather-bow!"

Manuel, a smart and handsome young fellow, with the surgeon and two others, soon cast loose the lashings of the gun, and in a twinkling it was loaded, not with round shot, but with some thirty or forty ball cartridges.

"Now, forward with it to the coaming of the hatchway," ordered the captain.

"But the bottom of the ship?" urged Gautier.

"Blow these rascals through it!" was the stern answer.

"Madre de Dios and all the saints keep us!" implored Fra Anselmo, crossing himself; "senor, you do not mean to destroy them thus?"

"Yes—like rats, padre mio," replied the Spanish captain. "Depress the muzzle, hombres—up with the breech; clap a handspike under it, Gautier. Ready the fuse—a lucifer match or any thing will do."

"Miserecordia—O miserecordia!" cried one fellow, looking up the hatchway with hands clasped, for the aspect of the round muzzle of the depressed cannon filled them all with terror, and made the miserable Lascars scream like children.

"Have mercy on us, senores!" howled the Spaniards in chorus, again and again.

"And what then?" asked Manuel Gautier, who was preparing a gun-match, as coolly as he might have made a paper cigarito.

"We shall return to our duty."

"Oh! no doubt, when we have got the weather gauge of you; but we mean to keep it, you cowardly picaroon!" said Estremera. "Up yet with the breech of the gun—cover as many of the wretches as you can."

"For pity's sake, senor," said Fra Anselmo, laying one hand on the captain's arm and the other on the trunnion of the brass cannon.

On looking down the hatch way, at that moment, my heart sickened when I beheld so many cowards crouching in a cold sweat beneath; so many uplifted hands; so many olive faces turning livid with terror; so many dark and expressive eyes glaring upward to one point,—the muzzle of the brass gun, which was to belch down death and mutilation among them; but there too lay Antonio el Cubano, covered with blood, and gazing at us with something like the smile of a mocking fiend in his countenance.

"We are ready to surrender, senores," said Benito Ojeda; "so, if you fire, our blood be upon your heads, and on that of El Cubano, who lured us into mischief!"

Their united cries for mercy became so appalling, that, though they would have yielded no mercy to us had the circumstances of the case been reversed, Estremera consented to withdraw the cannon on three conditions:

First, that they would surrender every thing they possessed in the shape of a weapon.

Second, that they would handcuff and deliver up all their ringleaders.

Third, that they would swear to be faithful to him and his mates for the remainder of the voyage.

To these offers they agreed, and about forty Albacete knives and creeses were thrown upon deck.

Hislop and I selected one or two as trophies of our victory, but Manuel Gautier tossed all the rest overboard.

Ten pairs of handcuffs were then thrown down. On this a tremendous row ensued among the culprits, who were only quelled on seeing the muzzle of the brass nine appear again; and in a few minutes Antonio, Ojeda, and eight others were forced up the hatchway, and dragged aft to the quarter-deck.

The mutineers then came sullenly up, and the number of cuts and bruises about them showed how severely they had been handled.

On their knees, before Fra Anselmo, the Spaniards made a solemn promise of peaceful and good behavior for the future; as for the Lascars, it was deemed advisable to keep their tindal as a hostage for their conduct in time to come.

When I went aft I found him lying prostrate over the gun to which he was bound, incapable of speech, and literally foaming at the mouth with impotent rage.

Tom Lambourne laughed, and said,—

"Master Rodney, always tie the hands of a Lascar, if you wish to make him hold his tongue."

"Why?"

"Because they are like a Chinese; they can never speak when their hands are tied. They can only sputter and choke like this old mountebank here."

Those who returned to their duty received bandages, wadding, &c., for their cuts and bruises, and even a tot of wine each, in token of amity. The three wounded men were placed under the care of the surgeon, and the dead Lascar was buried by his countrymen, who cast him over to leeward, when a couple of sharks soon took care of him; for we saw a black crooked fin on one side, and the white belly of a second monster on the other, as he turned up open-mouthed.

Then the body vanished in a whirlpool, with a downward jerk that made our hearts shudder!

The prisoners were ropes-ended without mercy by Manuel Gautier and the other two mates; they were also repeatedly drenched by buckets of salt water, and we stood by with cocked muskets until the whole—ten Spaniards and one Lascar—were secured in the cable tier, where an armed sentinel watched them day and night during the remainder of the voyage, a duty that frequently came to my turn, as I was a kind of waister on board, and was seldom sent aloft.

So ended this exciting and most deplorable affair, which might have proved the destruction of the ship and of every well-disposed person on board.

The twilight was passing with tropical rapidity, and when all was over, the hands were sent aloft to reduce the canvas.

"Stand by the studdingsail-halyards," shouted Manuel Gautier, in his own language. These sails were soon taken in, and the lower spars boom-ended alongside, while the royals and skysails were sent on deck, the loose shot were replaced in the rack round the coaming of the main-hatch, all loose ropes were tightly belayed or coiled away; and now, as the freshening breeze came more and more aft, the stately Spanish merchant ship bade good-night to the shores of Poison Island, and bore away through the silent sea toward the Cape de Verd.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE COAST OF AFRICA.

All these scenes made a terrible impression upon me. It seemed now indeed that the boyish "dream of life was at an end, and that its action had begun."

The whole affair, in all its details, furnished ample scope for conversation in the cabin for some time after; and too well we knew what our fate would have been, but for the promptitude of Estremera, and the courage of Marc Hislop and his Englishmen.

To each of the latter, the Dutch governor of Surabaya, grateful for his preservation from a cruel death, gave a gold doubloon, and José Estremera added five dollars per man.

To Hislop and me he presented each a pair of handsome brass-barrelled Spanish pistols, and from the governor we received each a valuable diamond ring; but Marc was quite the lion of the cabin passengers during the remainder of the voyage.

Fra Anselmo was greatly surprised by the extent of his scholarship and varied knowledge, which far exceeded the acquirements of most young seamen; but Hislop, who was a modest fellow, considered them as quite a matter of course, education being so generally diffused in his country.

Among our men, when any point was in dispute, it was common to hear them say,—

"Ask Master Hislop, he knows every thing."

"Of course he does," added Tattooed Tom, one day; "blowed if I didn't hear him beat that Portuguese friar all to nothing at talking in three different lingoes the other afternoon."

"Indeed, Tom, I am very far from knowing every thing," answered Hislop; "I am only a hard-working seaman like yourself; but I have picked up some knowledge of different matters. You must know many a thing that I don't know, for even the greatest men in the world can only learn a part of what can be known, and thus, at times, are as ignorant as those poor Lascars. But I have to thank my good mother at home, in old Scotland, for sparing nothing on me when a boy, and since then I have made myself,—as any man, indeed, who has the will may do."

And it seemed to me that there was much sound sense in what the Scotchman said.

On the morning, after the extinction of the mutiny, we came to anchor a league to the northward of Warrang, for what reason I know not unless it was that the wind blew hard and the land was on our lee.

It was my trick at the helm (as the two hours usually allotted to that duty are named), and when, for the purpose of stopping the ship's way, and bringing her head to the wind, and making the canvas shake prior to furling up, Manuel Gautier sang out in Spanish,—

"Timonero, luff and touch her!" I did not understand him, and nearly had the wheel twitched out of my hands.

The anchor was let go, and the great ship swung round with her head to the wind, which blew from the westward, and with her carved and painted stern to the green and wooded isle of Warrang, which is the most northerly of those that compose the archipelago of the Bissagos, a group of twenty little isles, lying near the mouth of the Rio Grande, in West Africa.

Banks of mud and sand render all these isles dangerous on the seaward. With the exception of Warrang, they are all inhabited by a wild and robust race of savages called the Bijaguas, who are of great stature, and are warlike and intrepid.

Though thirty miles in length, Warrang, with all its fertility, is destitute of inhabitants, being totally without springs or water.

While at anchor, we saw a dark savage, in a canoe, floundering about in the apple-green shoal water that lay between us and the land. Without fear he paddled close to the ship, and on signs being made that he might come on board, he moored his canoe under the mizzen chains, and sprang up the side with ease and confidence.

He was a tall and powerfully made man, with features of the lowest African type, and close curly wool on his head, but without a vestige of clothing, unless a string of beads were to be considered as such, and a little paint like ochre in color.

He pointed to the sea and then to his parched mouth, implying that he had been fishing, and was thirsty.

Some water was brought from the scuttle-butt; he drank of it greedily, and then patted his breast in token of gratitude.

The tattooing on Lambourne's face particularly attracted his attention, and seemed to excite his admiration; but poor Tom, with whom this unwished for decoration was a tender point, had no desire to fraternize with our sable visitor, and walking forward he leant against one of the windlass bitts and smoked his pipe sulkily.

The Bijagua now offered us his fish, which were strung upon a green withe, and Estremera presented him in return a gaudy old muleteer's jacket, which, being covered with brass buttons and red braid, would thus, he conceived, please the eye of a savage.

The Bijagua turned it round and viewed it in various ways, as if it puzzled him, upon which Hislop showed him how to put it on, and then attempted to persuade him to run his arms through the sleeves.

What idea occurred to the savage I know not; whether he conceived himself insulted, or that his personal liberty was in danger, but uttering a yell, he overthrew both Hislop and Estremera, and springing down the ship's side with the agility of a monkey, reached his canoe, and in half a minute was clear of the San Ildefonso and paddling vigorously in-shore.

"This reminds me," said Hislop, when he had gathered himself up and regained his breath, "of an old voyager of whom I once read. About a hundred years ago, a Captain Weddel, who commanded the ship Royal Charles, was at anchor in Augustine Bay, off the coast of Madagascar, and there he insisted on clothing a savage in a complete suit of clothes, including a bob-wig and three-cornered hat.

"'They will keep you warm,' said the captain.

"'But I am warm enough without them,' replied the savage, writhing and perspiring in attire so unusual to him.

"'They will defend your skin.'

"The savage laughed scornfully, saying,—

"'With my smallest arrow I can pierce them through and through.'

"He was in an agony of fear, and felt as if fettered with irons, and entreated so earnestly to be set on shore, that his wish was granted. The moment his foot was on the land, with every expression of rage and fury, he was seen to cast his hat one way, the wig another. Then he rent the coat and shirt from his back, the breeches soon followed, and he spat and danced upon them, in mingled contempt for attire, and joy that he was once more free. Our friend, the Bijagua, seems certainly to have shared his spirit and ideas."

In the evening, on the wind veering round and becoming more southerly, we prepared again for sea, and Hislop was directed to weigh the anchor, by underrunning the cable in the longboat, as the tide had ebbed, and we were in exceedingly shallow water, which was covered with green and slimy stuff, probably the inland débris of the Rio Grande.

This mode of weighing our Scotch mate performed skilfully, by placing the chain cable over the davit-head of the boat, and underrunning it till the anchor was apeak, when it was tripped by means of a buoy-rope.

There was a great length of cable out, for the water was so low that the ship could not have been hove to the anchor without danger.

"We'll make sailors of these Spanish lubbers before this voyage is over," I heard Lambourne say to Hislop, as they scrambled on board, and then the boat was hoisted in.

The evening sun was burning hot, and shed a red glare upon the green slime of the shallow sea, till it seemed to swelter in its heat, emitting an oppressive miasma that would have been deadly had we lingered long there.

The strange trees that fringed the shore were seen to toss their great cabbage-like leaves on the rising wind; but, as we speedily receded from the coast, they gradually lessened to the size of shrubs, and from shrubs to the size of little weeds, until they finally disappeared, when Warrang melted into the waves astern, as the San Ildefonso soon made a good offing and bore away to sea.

Our prisoners were now very effectually subdued.

More heavily ironed than the rest, Antonio sat ever silent and sullen, with his black-bearded chin sunk upon his breast; and frequently when it came to my turn to be posted as sentinel over him and the others in the cable tier, I could see, by the dim light of the horn lantern, which swung from the beam above (serving chiefly "to make the darkness visible"), his keen, fierce eyes fixed on me with a rattlesnake glare, which seemed to say, if a glance of hate and spite could kill, he would slay me.

After he became used to having his hands fettered, the old tindal of the Lascars was by far the most lively and conversable of the dingy gang, who all sat in a row, with their feet locked in the iron bilboes.

One day I gave this old fellow some wine and water, when he was almost sinking amid the stifling atmosphere of the den in which he was confined.

His gratitude was unbounded, and in a burst of confidence—which brought upon him the maledictions of the rest—he informed me in broken English (of which he had picked up a smattering during a voyage in one of our old Indiamen), that had the mutiny been successful, every one of us would have been made to walk the plank to leeward, and then the ship was to have been run ashore in some convenient creek, dismasted there, to conceal her from the seaward, and then to be completely plundered;—on the whole, unfolding a strange and incomprehensible project.

When he concluded, I smiled significantly, and tapped the butt of my loaded musket, as much as to say,—

"It is all very well, old boy, but we weathered you fairly!"

As we approached the Cape de Verd, Estremera issued strict orders that no man was to sleep on deck at night, for fear of moon blindness—an ailment not uncommon in the tropics. An old voyager, Sir Richard Hawkins, relates that the moon's rays off the African coast have a singularly pernicious effect upon the human body, and that "he knew a person who, sleeping one night in his cabin on the coast of Guinea, with the moon shining upon him, had such a violent pain burning in his shoulder, that for above twenty hours he was like a madman, and was not freed from it at last without a great many applications and abundance of suffering;" though what this ailment was, would now greatly puzzle one to discover.

After a delightful run, on one of the last days of autumn, we sighted the Cape de Verd and the Isle of Goree.

Those rose on our starboard bow, rapidly and abruptly, for the ship was running before the wind at the rate of nine knots an hour, with all her studding-sails rigged out.

It was about dawn when land was first discovered from aloft, and by midday the Isle of Goree bore about three miles off on our starboard beam.

The wind now fell light, and, as the ship crept along, we had a good opportunity for observing the coast by our telescopes.

Fra Anselmo, who had once resided there as a missionary, drew my attention to the sea of floating weeds, called the sargasso, through which we were sailing,—weeds which are so brilliant and so green as to impart a peculiar hue to the water, and thereby gave the promontory its name,—the Cape de Verd.

Along the shore we could see groves of the orange, the lemon, the pomegranate, and the citron tree, with their ripe golden fruit studding the green foliage like golden balls.

On the almost inaccessible isle of Goree, Fra Anselmo showed to us the old castle of St. Michael, which was built by the Dutch in 1617, and stormed forty-six years after by the English, under Admiral Holmes. In 1664 it was retaken by Adrian de Ruyter, after a little band of sixty British soldiers, under a Scotsman, named Sir George Abercrombie, made a defence so protracted and so resolute, that they only surrendered after the walls were battered to ruin, and all their ammunition was expended.

It was not without deep interest that we viewed these scenes and heard those forgotten fragments of our past history, when so far from old England, and while sailing along a shore so wild and vast as Africa.

We used soundings while skirting the dangerous shoal known as Compan's Bank, over which it is alleged a famous buccaneer, named Nicholas Compan, sailed his galley; and by sunset the Cape de Verd was far astern, and nothing but the blue sea around us again; for now that wondrous shore receded eastward, far away toward the mouth of the Senegal.