Robert Michael Ballantyne
The Lonely Island: The Refuge of the Mutineers
Jack Brace smacked his lips in anticipation, thanked Adams in advance, and drew his sleeve across his mouth in preparation, while his host set a cocoa-nut-cup filled with a whitish substance before him.
“That’s a noo sort of a glass, John Adams,” remarked the man, as he raised and smelt it; “also a strange kind o’ tipple.”
He sipped, and seemed disappointed. Then he sipped again, and seemed pleased.
“What is it, may I ax?”
“It’s milk of the cocoa-nut,” answered Adams.
“Milk o’ the ko-ko-nut, eh? Well, now, that is queer. If you’d ’a called it the milk o’ the cow-cow-nut, I could have believed it. Hows’ever, it ain’t bad, tho’ raither wishy-washy. Got no stronger tipple than that?”
“Nothin’ stronger than that, ’xcept water,” said John, with one of his sly glances; “but it’s a toss up which is the strongest.”
“Well, it’ll be a toss down with me whichever is the strongest,” said the accommodating tar, as he once more raised the cup to his lips, and drained it.
“But, I say, you unhung mutineer, do you mean for to tell me that all them good-lookin’ boys an’ girls are yours?”
He looked round on the crowd of open-mouthed young people, who, from six-foot Toc down to the youngest staggerer, gazed at him solemnly, all eyes and ears.
“No, they ain’t,” answered Adams, with a laugh. “What makes you ask?”
“’Cause they all calls you father.”
“Oh!” replied his host, “that’s only a way they have; but there’s only four of ’em mine, three girls an’ a boy. The rest are the descendants of my eight comrades, who are now dead and gone.”
“Well, now, d’ye know, John Adams, alias Smith, mutineer, as ought to have bin hung but wasn’t, an’ as nobody would have the heart to hang now, even if they had the chance, this here adventur is out o’ sight one o’ the most extraor’nar circumstances as ever did happen to me since I was the length of a marlinspike.”
As Mainmast here entered to announce that the pig was ready for consumption, the amazed mariner was led to a rich repast under the neighbouring banyan-tree. Here he was bereft of speech for a considerable time, whether owing to the application of his jaws to food, or increased astonishment, it is difficult to say.
Before the repast began, Adams, according to custom, stood up, removed his hat, and briefly asked a blessing. To which all assembled, with clasped hands and closed eyes, responded Amen.
This, no doubt, was another source of profound wonder to Jack Brace, but he made no remark at the time. Neither did he remark on the fact that the women did not sit down to eat with the males of the party, but stood behind and served them, conversing pleasantly the while.
After dinner was concluded, and thanks had been returned, Jack Brace leaned his back against one of the descending branches of the banyan-tree, and with a look of supreme satisfaction drew forth a short black pipe.
At sight of this the countenance of Adams flushed, and his eyes almost sparkled.
“There it is again,” he murmured; “the old pipe once more! Let me look at it, Jack Brace; it’s not the first by a long way that I’ve handled.”
Jack handed over the pipe, a good deal amused at the manner of his host, who took the implement of fumigation and examined it carefully, handling it with tender care, as if it were a living and delicate creature. Then he smelt it, then put it in his mouth and gave it a gentle draw, while an expression of pathetic satisfaction passed over his somewhat care-worn countenance.
“The old taste, not a bit changed,” he murmured, shutting his eyes. “Brings back the old ships, and the old messmates, and the old times, and Old England.”
“Come, old feller,” said Jack Brace, “if it’s so powerful, why not light it and have a real good pull, for old acquaintance sake?”
He drew from his pocket flint and tinder, matches being unknown in those days, and began to strike a light, when Adams took the pipe hastily from his mouth and handed it back.
“No, no,” he said, with decision, “it’s only the old associations that it calls up, that’s all. As for baccy, I’ve bin so long without it now, that I don’t want it; and it would only be foolish in me to rouse up the old cravin’. There, you light it, Jack. I’ll content myself wi’ the smell of it.”
“Well, John Adams, have your way. You are king here, you know; nobody to contradict you. So I’ll smoke instead of you, if these young ladies won’t object.”
The young ladies referred to were so far from objecting, that they were burning with impatience to see a real smoker go to work, for the tobacco of the mutineers had been exhausted, and all the pipes broken or lost, before most of them were born.
“And let me tell you, John Adams,” continued the sailor, when the pipe was fairly alight, “I’ve not smoked a pipe in such koorious circumstances since I lit one, an’ had my right fore-finger shot off when I was stuffin’ down the baccy, in the main-top o’ the Victory at the battle o’ Trafalgar. But it was against all rules to smoke in action, an’ served me right. Hows’ever, it got me my discharge, and that’s how I come to be in a Yankee merchantman this good day.”
At the mention of battle and being wounded in action, the old professional sympathies of John Adams were awakened.
“What battle might that have been?” he asked.
“Which?” said Jack.
“Traflegar,” said the other.
Jack Brace took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at Adams, as though he had asked where Adam and Eve had been born. For some time he could not make up his mind how to reply.
“You don’t mean to tell me,” he said at length, “that you’ve never heard of the—battle—of—Trafalgar?”
“Never,” answered Adams, with a faint smile.
“Nor of the great Lord Nelson?”
“Never heard his name till to-day. You forget, Jack, that I’ve not seen a mortal man from Old England, or any other part o’ the civilised world, since the 28th day of April 1789, and that’s full nineteen years ago.”
“That’s true, John; that’s true,” said the seaman, slowly, as if endeavouring to obtain some comprehension of what depths of ignorance the fact implied. “So, I suppose you’ve never heerd tell of—hold on; let me rake up my brain-pan a bit.”
He tilted his straw hat, and scratched his head for a few minutes, puffing the while immense clouds of smoke, to the inexpressible delight of the open-mouthed youngsters around him.
“You—you’ve never heerd tell of Lord Howe, who licked the French off Ushant, somewheres about sixteen years gone by?”
“Never.”
“Nor of the great victories gained in the ’95 by Sir Edward Pellew, an’ Admiral Hotham, an’ Admiral Cornwallis, an’ Lord Bridgeport?”
“No, of coorse ye couldn’t; nor yet of Admiral Duncan, who, in the ’97, (I think it was), beat the Dutch fleet near Camperdown all to sticks. Nor yet of that tremendous fight off Cape Saint Vincent in the same year, when Sir John Jervis, with nothin’ more than fifteen sail o’ the Mediterranean fleet, attacked the Spaniards wi’ their twenty-seven ships o’ the line—line-o’-battle ships, you’ll observe, John Adams—an’ took four of ’em, knocked half of the remainder into universal smash, an’ sunk all the rest?”
“That was splendid!” exclaimed Adams, his martial spirit rising, while the eyes of the young listeners around kept pace with their mouths in dilating.
“Splendid? Pooh!” said Jack Brace, delivering puffs between sentences that resembled the shots of miniature seventy-fours, “that was nothin’ to what followed. Nelson was in that fight, he was, an’ Nelson began to shove out his horns a bit soon after that, I tell you. Well, well,” continued the British tar with a resigned look, “to think of meetin’ a man out of Bedlam who hasn’t heerd of Nelson and the Nile, w’ich, of coorse, ye haven’t. It’s worth while comin’ all this way to see you.”
Adams smiled and said, “Let’s hear all about it.”
“All about it, John? Why, it would take me all night to tell you all about it,” (there was an audible gasp of delight among the listeners), “and I haven’t time for that; but you must know that Lord Nelson, bein’ Sir Horatio Nelson at that time, chased the French fleet, under Admiral Brueys, into Aboukir Bay, (that’s on the coast of Egypt), sailed in after ’em, anchored alongside of ’em, opened on ’em wi’ both broadsides at once, an’ blew them all to bits.”
“You don’t say that, Jack Brace!”
“Yes, I do, John Adams; an’ nine French line-o’-battle ships was took, two was burnt, two escaped, and the biggest o’ the lot, the great three-decker, the Orient, was blowed up, an’ sent to the bottom. It was a thorough-goin’ piece o’ business that, I tell you, an’ Nelson meant it to be, for w’en he gave the signal to go into close action, he shouted, ‘Victory or Westminster Abbey.’”
“What did he mean by that?” asked Adams.
“Why, don’t you see, Westminster Abbey is the old church in London where they bury the great nobs o’ the nation in; there’s none but great nobs there, you know—snobs not allowed on no account whatever. So he meant, of coorse, victory or death, d’ye see? After which he’d be put into Westminster Abbey. An’ death it was to many a good man that day. Why, if you take even the Orient alone, w’en she was blowed up, Admiral Brueys himself an’ a thousand men went up along with her, an’ never came down again, so far as we know.”
“It must have bin bloody work,” said Adams.
“I believe you, my boy,” continued the sailor, “it was bloody work. There was some of our chaps that was always for reasonin’ about things, an’ would never take anything on trust, ’xcept their own inventions, who used to argufy that it was an awful waste o’ human life, to say nothin’ o’ treasure, (as they called it), all for nothin’. I used to wonder sometimes why them reasoners jined the sarvice at all, but to be sure most of ’em had been pressed. To my thinkin’, war wouldn’t be worth a brass farthin’ if there wasn’t a deal o’ blood and thunder about it; an’, of coorse, if we’re goin’ to have that sort o’ thing we must pay for it. Then, we didn’t do it for nothin’. Is it nothin’ to have the honour an’ glory of lickin’ the Mounseers an’ bein’ able to sing ‘Britannia rules the waves?’”
John Adams, who was not fond of argument, and did not agree with some of Jack’s reasoning, said, “P’r’aps;” and then, drawing closer to his new friend with deepening interest, said, “Well, Jack, what more has happened?”
“What more? Why, I’ll have to start a fresh pipe before I can answer that.”
Having started a fresh pipe he proceeded, and the group settled down again to devour his words, and watch and smell the smoke.
“Well, then, there was—but you know I ain’t a diction’ry, or a cyclopodia, or a gazinteer—let me see. After the battle o’ the Nile there came the Irish Rebellion.”
“Did that do ’em much good, Jack?”
“O yes, John; it united ’em immediately after to Old England, so that we’re now Great Britain an’ Ireland. Then Sir Ralph Abercromby, he gave the French an awful lickin’ on land in Egypt at Aboukir, where Nelson had wopped ’em on the sea, and, last of all came the glorious battle of Trafalgar. But it wasn’t all glory, for we lost Lord Nelson there. He was killed.”
“That was a bad business,” said Adams, with a look of sympathy. “And you was in that battle, was you?”
“In it! I should just think so,” replied Jack Brace, looking contemplatively at his mutilated finger. “Why, I was in Lord Nelson’s own ship, the Victory. Come, I’ll give you an outline of it. This is how it began.”
The ex-man-of-war’s-man puffed vigorously for a few seconds, to get the pipe well alight, he remarked, and collect his thoughts.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Jack Brace stirs up the War Spirit of Adams
“You must know, John Adams,” said Jack Brace, with a look and a clearing of the throat that raised great expectations in the breasts of the listeners, “you must know that for a long while before the battle Lord Nelson had bin scourin’ the seas, far and near, in search o’ the French and Spanish fleets, but do what he would, he could never fall in with ’em. At last he got wind of ’em in Cadiz Harbour, and made all sail to catch ’em. It was on the 19th of October 1805 that Villeneuve, that was the French admiral, put to sea with the combined fleets o’ France and Spain. It wasn’t till daybreak of the 21st that we got sight of ’em, right ahead, formed in close line, about twelve miles to lee’ard, standin’ to the s’uth’ard, off Cape Trafalgar.
“Ha, John Adams, an’ boys an’ girls all, you should have seen that sight; it would have done you good. An’ you should have felt our buzzums; they was fit to bust, I tell you! You see, we’d bin chasin’ of ’em so long, that we could scarce believe our eyes when we saw ’em at long last. They wor bigger ships and more of ’em than ours; but what cared Nelson for that? not the shank of a brass button! he rather liked that sort o’ thing; for, you know, one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen any day.”
“No, no, Jack Brace,” said John Adams, with a quiet smile and shake of the head; “’snot quite so many as that.”
“Not quite!” repeated Brace, vehemently; “why, it’s my opinion that I could lick any six o’ the Mounseers myself. Thursday November Christian there—”
“He ain’t November yet,” interrupted Adams, quietly, “he’s only October.”
“No matter, it’s all the same. I tell ’ee, John, that he could wallop twenty of ’em, easy. There ain’t no go in ’em at all.”
“Didn’t you tell me, Jack Brace, that Trafalgar was a glorious battle?”
“In coorse I did, for so it was.”
“Didn’t the Frenchmen stick to their guns like men?”
“No doubt of it.”
“An’ they didn’t haul down their colours, I suppose, till they was about blown to shivers?”
“You’re about right there, John Adams.”
“Well, then, you can’t say they’ve got no go in ’em. Don’t underrate your enemy, whatever you do, for it’s not fair; besides, in so doin’ you underrate your own deeds. Moreover, we don’t allow boastin’ aboard of this island; so go ahead, Jack Brace, and tell us what you did do, without referrin’ to what you think you could do. Mind, I’m king here, and I’ll have to clap you in irons if you let your tongue wag too freely.”
“All right, your majesty,” replied Brace, with a bow of graceful humility, which deeply impressed his juvenile audience; “I’ll behave better in futur’ if you’ll forgive me this time. Well, as I was about to say, when you sent that round shot across my bows and brought me up, Nelson he would have fought ’em if they’d had ten times the number o’ ships that we had. As it was, the enemy had thirty-three sail of the line and seven frigates. We had only twenty-seven sail of the line and four frigates, so we was outnumbered by nine vessels. Moreover the enemy had 4000 lobsters on board—”
“Lobsters bein’ land sodgers, my dears,” remarked Adams, in explanation, “so-called ’cause of their bein’ all red-coated; but the French sodgers are only red-trousered, coats bein’ blue. Axin’ your pardon, Brace, go on.”
The seaman, who had availed himself of the interruption to stir up and stuff down his pipe, resumed.
“Likewise one of their line-o’-battle ships was a huge four-decker, called the Santissima Trinidad, and they had some of the best Tyrolese riflemen that could be got scattered throughout the fleet, as we afterwards came to find out to our cost.
“Soon after daylight Nelson came on deck. I see him as plain as if he was before me at this moment, for, bein’ stationed in the mizzen-top o’ the Victory—that was Nelson’s ship, you know—I could see everything quite plain. He stood there for a minute or so, with his admiral’s frock-coat covered with orders on the left breast, and his empty right sleeve fastened up to it; for you must know he had lost his right arm in action before that, and also his right eye, but the arm and eye that were left were quite enough for him to work with. After a word or two with the officers, he signalled to bear down on the enemy in two lines.
“Then it seemed to have occurred to him that the smoke of battle might render the signals difficult or impossible to make out, for he immediately made one that would serve for everything. It was this: ‘if signals can’t be seen, no captain can do wrong if he places his ship alongside an enemy.’ Of coorse we all knew that he meant to win that battle; but, for the matter of that, every soul in the fleet, from the admiral to the smallest powder-monkey, meant—”
“Boasting not allowed,” said Dan McCoy, displaying his fine teeth from ear to ear.
The seaman looked at him with a heavy frown.
“You young slip of a pump-handle, what d’ye mean?”
“The king’s orders,” said Dan, pointing to Adams, while the rest of the Pitcairners seemed awestruck by his presumption.
The frown slowly left the visage of Jack Brace. He shut his eyes, smiled benignly, and delivered a series of heavy puffs from the starboard side of his mouth.
Then a little squeak that had been bottled up in the nose of Otaheitan Sally forced a vent, and the whole party burst into hilarious laughter.
“Just so,” resumed Brace, when they had recovered, “that is exactly what we did in the mizzen-top o’ the Victory when we made out the signal, only we stuck a cheer on to the end o’ the laugh. After that came another signal, just as we were about to go into action, ‘England expects that every man will this day do his duty.’ The effect of that signal was just treemendious, I tell you.
“I noticed at this time that some of Nelson’s officers were botherin’ him,—tryin’ to persuade him, so to speak, to do somethin’ he didn’t want to. I afterwards found out that they were tryin’ to persuade him not to wear his orders, but he wouldn’t listen to ’em. Then they tried to convince him it would be wise for him to keep out of action as long as possible. He seemed to give in to this, for he immediately signalled the Temeraire and Leviathan, which were abreast of us, to pass ahead; but in my opinion this was nothin’ more than a sly joke of the Admiral, for he kept carrying on all sail on the Victory, so that it wasn’t possible for these ships to obey the order.
“We made the attack in two lines. The Victory led the weather-line of fourteen ships, and Collingwood, in the Royal Sovereign, led the lee-line of thirteen ships.
“As we bore down, the enemy opened the ball. We held our breath, for, as no doubt you know, messmate, just before the beginnin’ of a fight, when a man is standin’ still an’ doin’ nothin’, he’s got time to think; an’ he does think, too, in a way, mayhap, that he’s not much used to think.”
“That’s true, Jack Brace,” responded Adams, with a grave nod; “an’, d’ye know, it strikes me that it would be better for all of us if we’d think oftener in that fashion when we’ve got time to do it.”
“You’re right, John Adams; you’re right. Hows’ever, we hadn’t much time to think that morning, for the shot soon began to tell. One round shot came, as it seemed, straight for my head, but it missed me by a shave, an’ only took off the hat of a man beside me that was about a fut shorter than myself.
“‘You see the advantage,’ says he, ‘o’ bein’ a little feller.’ ‘That’s so,’ says I, but I didn’t say or think no more that I knows on after that, for we had got within musket range, and the small bullets went whistling about our heads, pickin’ off or woundin’ a man here an’ there.
“It was just then that I thought it time to put my pipe in my pocket, for, you see, I had been havin’ a puff on the sly as we was bearin’ down; an’ I put up my fore-finger to shove the baccy down, when one o’ them stingin’ little things comes along, whips my best cutty out o’ my mouth, an’ carries the finger along with it. Of coorse I warn’t goin’ below for such a small matter, so I pulls out my hankerchief, an’ says I to the little man that lost his hat, ‘Just take a round turn here, Jim,’ says I, ‘an’ I’ll be ready for action again in two minutes.’ Jim, he tied it up, but before he quite done it, the round shot was pitchin’ into us like hail, cuttin’ up the sails and riggin’ most awful.
“They told me afterwards that Nelson gave orders to steer straight for the bow of the great Santissima Trinidad, and remarked, ‘It’s too warm work to last long,’ but he did not return a single shot, though about fifty of our men had been killed and wounded. You see, he never was fond of wastin’ powder an’ shot. He generally reserved his fire till it could be delivered with stunnin’ effect.
“Just then a round shot carried away our main-topmast with all her stun-s’ls an’ booms. By good luck, however, we were close alongside o’ the enemy’s ship Redoubtable by that time. Our tiller ropes were shot away too, but it didn’t matter much now. The word was given, and we opened with both broadsides at once. You should have felt the Victory tremble, John Adams. We tackled the Redoubtable with the starboard guns, and the Bucentaur and Santissima Trinidad with the port guns. Of course they gave it us hot and strong in reply. At the same time Captain Hardy, in the Temeraire, fell on board the Redoubtable on her other side, and the Fougueux, another o’ the enemy, fell on board the Temeraire; so there we were four ships abreast—a compact tier—blazin’ into each other like mad, with the muzzles of the guns touchin’ the sides when they were run out, an’ men stationed with buckets at the ports, to throw water into the shot-holes to prevent their takin’ fire.
“It was awful work, I tell you, with the never-stopping roar of great guns and rattle of small arms, an’ the smoke, an’ the decks slippery with blood. The order was given to depress our guns and load with light charges of powder, to prevent the shot going right through the enemy into our own ship on the other side.
“The Redoubtable flew no colours, so we couldn’t tell when she struck, and twice the Admiral, wishing to spare life, gave orders to cease firing, thinking she had given in. But she had not done so, and soon after a ball from her mizzen-top struck Nelson on the left shoulder, and he fell. They took him below at once.
“Of course we in the mizzen-top knew nothing of this, for we couldn’t see almost anything for the smoke, only here and there a bit of a mast, or a yard-arm, or a bowsprit, while the very air trembled with the tremendous and continuous roar.
“We were most of us wounded by that time, more or less, but kept blazing away as long as we could stand. Then there came cheers of triumph mingling with the shouts and cries of battle. The ships of the enemy were beginning to strike. One after another the flags went down. Before long the cry was, ‘Five have struck!’ then ‘Ten, hurrah!’ then fifteen, then twenty, hurrah!”
“Hurrah! Old England for ever!” cried Adams, starting to his feet and waving his hat in a burst of irrepressible excitement, which roused the spirits of the youths around, who, leaping up with flushed faces and glittering eyes, sent up from the groves of Pitcairn a vigorous British cheer in honour of the great victory of Trafalgar.
“But,” continued Jack Brace, when the excitement had abated, “there was great sorrow mingled with our triumph that day, for Nelson, the hero of a hundred fights, was dead. The ball had entered his spine. He lived just long enough to know that our victory was complete, and died thanking God that he had done his duty.”
“That was truly a great battle,” said Adams, while Brace, having concluded, was refilling his pipe.
“Right you are, John,” said the other; “about the greatest victory we ever gained. It has settled the fleets of France and Spain, I guess, for the next fifty years.”
“But what was it all for?” asked Bessy Mills, looking up in the sailor’s face with much simplicity.
“What was it for?” repeated Brace, with a perplexed look. “Why, my dear, it was—it was for the honour and glory of Old England, to be sure.”
“No, no, Jack, not quite that,” interposed Adams, with a laugh, “it was to clap a stopper on the ambition of the French, as far as I can make out; or rather to snub that rascal Napoleon Bonnypart, an’ keep him within bounds.”
“But he ain’t easy to keep within bounds,” said Brace, putting his pipe in his pocket and rising; “for he’s been knockin’ the lobsters of Europe over like ninepins of late years. Hows’ever, we’ll lick him yet on land, as we’ve licked him already on the sea, or my name’s not—”
He stopped abruptly, having caught sight of Dan McCoy’s twinkling eye.
“Now, John Adams, I must go, else the Cap’n’ll think I’ve deserted altogether.”
“Oh, don’t go yet; please don’t!” pleaded Dolly Young, as she grasped and fondled the seaman’s huge hand.
Dolly was at that time about nine years of age, and full of enthusiasm. She was seconded in her entreaties by Dinah Adams, who seized the other hand, while several of the older girls sought to influence him by words and smiles; but Jack Brace was not to be overcome.
“I’ll be ashore again to-morrow, p’r’aps, with the Captain, if he lands,” said Brace, “and spin you some more yarns about the wars.”
With this promise they were obliged to rest content. In a few minutes the visitor was carried over the surf by Toc and Charlie in their canoe, and soon put on board the Topaz, which stood inshore to receive him.
