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.