CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE WRECK OF THE "CENTIPEDE."
"Gun bellows forth to gun, and pain Rings out her wild, delirious scream; Redoubling thunders shake the main, Loud crashing falls the shot-rent beam. The timbers with the broadsides strain; The slippery decks send up a steam From hot and living blood; and high And shrill is heard the death-pang cry!"
"She struck where the white and fleecy waves Looked soft as carded wool; But the cruel rocks they gored her side Like the horns of an angry bull."
Piron turned his gaze toward the first lieutenant, moved away the full glasses of wine, which he had never raised to his lips since the commodore began, and, resting his bloodless cheek on his other hand, listened.
"It's vera interesting indeed." "Tear an' ages, boy! Fire away!" quoth the Scotchman and his Milesian crony in a breath.
Hardy threw his arm over the shoulder of Harry Darcantel as if it was a pleasant Corinthian column to lean upon, and breaking off the ashes of his cigar on the rim of a wine-glass which he had specially devoted to that purpose, he forthwith began:
"I am quite confident, gentlemen, that I can not describe what afterward took place so well as Commodore Cleveland, but, at all events, I'll do my best. Nor do I remember very distinctly the events of the night after we got out of the Musketeers Keys; for I was pretty well fagged out myself, and all of us who had the watch below turned in to take the first wink of sleep we could catch for forty hours.
"The next morning, however, when I took the deck, I found the corvette under royals and flying-jib, with a fresh trade wind blowing from about east-northeast, and a smooth sea; though close hauled as we were, and going ten knots, the spray was flying well up the weather leech of the fore-sail. The 'Centipede' was about a mile and a half ahead, jammed on the wind, and trying all she could to eat the wind out of us; but, as the commodore there said at the time, he had thrown that trick away when he cut off eight or ten feet of his fore-mast, and made a brigantine of the craft, so that he could not brace his head-yards sharper, or lie nearer the wind than we did.
"I remember, also, that two or three of the officers and half a hundred of the sailors were very anxious to pitch shot at the chase from the long eighteen in the weather bridle port; but the captain refused, and said we might lose a cable's length or two in yawing off to fire, and it would be better to save the powder until we could slam a broadside into him. But all the while that 'Centipede' was handled and steered in such a thorough seamanlike manner, and proved herself such a beautiful sea-boat, that I doubt if there was a man on board the 'Scourge' who would not have given a year's pay to have taken her whole, and only expended a spare top-mast studding-sail halliards for the necks of her crew.
"From the top-gallant forecastle we could see every thing that took place on the schooner's deck: sometimes a lot of fellows forward reeving some fresh gear, peering about the low bowsprit, or putting on a seizing to a traveler on the jib-stay; with a chap or two aloft stitching a chafing-mat on the lee backstays; and then aft a man shinning up the main shrouds with a tin pot hung around his neck, greasing the jaws of the main gaff, and twitching a wrinkle out of the gaff-top-sail, so that it would lie as flat as this dining-room table set on end.
"But always, from the very first moment we descried her--before the hurricane and afterward--there were two fellows abaft by the taffrail. One a large fat man, in a long dark dress, who appeared at times to be leaning over the rail as if he were sea-sick; and the other a spare, tall-built fellow, who sat there with a quadrant in his hands and smoking cigars, measuring the distance between the two vessels as if he were a government surveyor, and especially appointed to make a hydrographical chart of the Caribbean Sea. Occasionally, too, we could see him approach the binnacle, spread a chart on the deck at his feet, examine it closely with a pair of dividers in his hands, and then he would return to his seat on the taffrail, cigar in his mouth and quadrant to his eye as before.
"Nor were we idle on board the 'Scourge;' for when the breeze lulled we slacked up the lower rigging and stays, got down all extra weight and hamper from the tops, sent the watch below to the berth-deck with a round shot apiece in their hammocks, moved a couple of carronades about the spar-deck till we got the ship in the best sailing trim, and then we went skipping and springing through the water with the elasticity of an India-rubber ball.
"At noon the sailing-master reported the position of the ship to be two hundred and eighty miles from the nearest land, which was the Darien Coast. So all that day and all that night, with a moon to make a lover weep to see, we went bowling after our waspish consort in hopes before long of taking the sting out of her. No kite ever pursued its quarry with a keener eye than we did. No hound ever leaped after a wolf with the froth streaming from his jaws and blood-red thirsty eyes, than did the 'Scourge' chase that infamous pirate. The delay only made our eyes sparkle and our teeth sharper in expectation; for we knew we would have our prey sooner or later, and it was only a bite and a pleasure deferred.
"The next morning and all the day there was no change to speak of in our respective positions. The 'Centipede' went skimming on over the water with every thread of canvas she could spread, reeling over on her side at times when the breeze freshened, while the spray flashed up joyously and sparkled in the sun, leaving a bubbling current of foam in her wake, which, before it had been entirely lost in the regular waves of the sea, the corvette's sharp bows would plunge into, and again make it flash high up to her fore-yard, and then go seething, and hissing, and kissing her black sides until it rippled around her rudder and was lost again in the wake astern.
"And all the time that man sat with a cigar in his mouth on the pirate's taffrail, while Commodore Cleveland there stood with a spy-glass to his eye on the poop of the 'Scourge.'
"You may imagine, gentlemen," continued Hardy, as he again knocked the ashes off his cigar, "that going to sea is attended with some few discomforts, such as battening down the hatches in a sirocco in the Mediterranean off Tripoli; a simoom in the China Seas; a bitter northwest gale off Barnegat, with the rigging and sails frozen as hard as an iceberg; but if a man can catch forty winks of sleep once in a while, whether in a hammock, or on an oak carronade slide with the breech of a gun for a pillow, he may manage to weather through it. But from the moment we first saw that pirate till we saw the last of him, neither the first lieutenant of the 'Scourge' nor the commander of the 'Centipede' once closed their eyes, unless--well, I won't anticipate."
Piron reached over his hand and shook that of his friend Cleveland convulsively.
"Vera weel, mon! vera weel!" "He's the very man to do it!" said Stewart and Burns to Stingo, nodding backward at the commodore.
Another striking contrast to the hand-shaking, virtuous compact between Captain Brand and his friend, the pious padre Ricardo! I wonder if they are shaking hands now! Probably not.
"Gentlemen," resumed Hardy, as he shook the ashes level in his wine-glass, as if he wished to preserve them to clean his teeth with after smoking, "I will not detain you much longer. Both vessels were making great speed, and long before sunset we had been keeping a bright look-out for the land. At last it was reported, trending all around both bows, low and with a trembling mirage of pines and mangroves looming up, and a multitude of rocky keys dead ahead. We were steering directly for Las Mulatas Islands, a cluster then little known to any navigators save, perhaps, the buccaneers of the Gulf of Columbus, and perhaps, too, with the intention of running us just such another dance as our pilot had a night or two before. However, we were again all prepared to explore the unknown reefs; and, moreover, we got the starboard anchor off the bow, and bent the cables to that and the spare anchors amidships, so as to be all ready to moor ship in case our pilot required us to do so. And likewise the cutters were hanging clear from the davits--the same boats which had once before paid a complimentary visit to some of his friends--supposing he would like to entertain us in person.
"The sun went down again in a fiery blaze, and with its last ray there slowly rose to the main truck of the pirate a swallow-tailed black flag, with a white skull and cross-bones in the dark field. It fluttered for a moment out straight and clear, and then twisted itself around the thin mast, never more to be released by hands or halliards! That was the last glimpse those pirates ever caught of the murderous symbol they had so often fought and sailed under; and it was the last sun that a good many aching eyes ever looked upon who were sailing there in that half league of blue water. The moon, however, was riding bright and beaming, as clear as a bell, overhead, and that was all the light we cared for. The 'Centipede,' no doubt, would have preferred no moon at all, with a cloudy sky and a bit of a rain squall, to pursue the intricate navigation before her; but Heaven arranged the atmospheric scenery otherwise.
"'By the deep eight!' sang out the leadsman in the port chains. 'The mark five!' came from the opposite side. 'Another cast, lads--quick!' 'And a half four!' 'Six fathoms, sir!'
"'We must have stirred up the sand, Cleveland,' said the captain; but even as he spoke the man in the starboard chains cried, 'Three fathoms, sir!' and while each instant we expected the ship to bring up all standing, and the masts to go by the board, the other leadsman sung out, joyfully, 'No bottom with the line, sir!'
"Well, we were safely through that bed of coral, doing, no doubt, some trifling damage to the tender shoots and branches, as we flew through a narrow channel, with the waves breaking and moaning on the sandy shores over the keys, out into deep water again.
"Four or five miles beyond stood out a bluff rock, looking in the moonlight like a dozing lion with his paws crossed before him, ready to bound upon any who should approach his lair in the dense jungle of pines and tangled thickets which stood up like a bristling mane on the ridge behind.
"The 'Centipede' was now but a short half-mile ahead of us, her deck alive with men, and manifestly ready for some desperate devilment. On her after rail, too, stood that man, tall and erect, his feet steadied by the cavil of the main boom, a spy-glass to his eye, and looking at the rocky lion now close aboard him, still with a cigar in his mouth; and we thought we could even see the thin puffs of smoke curling around his face. Suddenly, too, we saw the spy-glass whirled around his head, and at the instant the vessel fell dead off before the wind, the great main-sail flew over with a stunning crash and clatter of blocks and sheets as the wind caught it on the other quarter, making the long switch of a mast to spring like a bow, while the weather-shrouds slacked up for a moment in bights, and then came back taut with a twang you might have heard a mile! We could now see, as the space opened behind the rock, another frightful jagged ledge, on which the rollers were heaving in liquid masses high up a precipitous rock, and where the channel was not a cable's length wide, leading into a foaming gloomy inlet, where not even the beams of the moon could penetrate! I heard the captain say, in his old decided way,
"'Now for it, Cleveland! You take the battery, and I'll look out for the ship!'
"Then, gentlemen," said Hardy, with unusual animation, as he waved his right arm aloft with an imaginary cutlass swinging over his head, "came the word 'Fire!'
"Yes, the entire starboard broadside, round shot, grape, and canister, all pointed toward a centre, were delivered with one simultaneous shock--the hurricane a mere cat's-paw in comparison--which shook the corvette as if she had struck a rock, while the smoke and sheets of flame spouted out from the cannon, half hiding the black torrent which gushed forth from so many hoarse throats; and as the roar of the concussion was taken up in terrible echoes from the lion on the rock, a peppering volley of musket-balls from the marines on the poop and forecastle made a barking tenor to the music.
"Meanwhile the helm of the 'Scourge' was hove hard down, and as she just swirled, by a miracle, clear of the ledge under our lee, and came up to the wind with the sails slamming and banging hard enough to send the canvas out of the bolt-ropes, the courses were clewed up, every thing aloft came down by the run; anchor after anchor went plunging to the bottom, and before the cables had fairly begun to fly out of the hawse-holes with their infernal jar and rattle, high above the sounds of flapping sails, snapping blocks, running chains, and what not, came another clear order, 'Fire!'
"Then pealed out the port broadside at a helpless, dismasted hulk within two hundred yards of our beam, rolling like a worm-eaten log on the top of a ruffled broad roller, going to break, in ten seconds, on the ledge, whose pointed rocks stood up like black toothed fangs to grind its prey to atoms! But before the fangs closed upon it our own teeth gave it a shake; and as the breath of our bull-dogs was swept aft by the fresh breeze, we could see the sluggish mass almost rise bodily out of water as it was torn and split by the round iron wedges, the fragments flying up in dark, ragged strips and splinters with squirming ropes around them, looking, in the moonlight, like skeletons of gibbeted pirates tossed, gallows and chains, into the air, and then coming down in dips and splashes into the unforgiving water.
"A minute later, all that was left of the shattered hull fell broadside into the open fangs of the ledge, which ground it with its merciless jaws into toothpicks. But in all the lively music and destruction going on around us--which takes longer to tell than to act--we heard no human voice save one, and that came in a loud, terrified yell amid the crunching roar of the ledge,
"'_O Madre! Madre dolorosa!_'
"This, gentlemen, was the last sound that came from the piratical schooner 'Centipede.'"