Part 3

“It was, indeed,” replied the old pensioner, “till it got to be a kind of Solomon’s proverb, that ‘a king’s ship and the gallows refused nobody,’ and the tars that had always done their duty in battle and in storm, felt it a great degradation to be mustered with felons and jail-birds, and rely upon it, your honour, it prevented many a brave lad from volunteering; for who would go for to enter the sarvice, when almost every ship had a black list as long as the main-top bowline. Besides, there was another concarn that bred evils as fast as barnacles grows on the bottom of a dull sailer. D’ye mind, the fellows didn’t love work, and when there was a fresh breeze, they either skulked down below, or got kicked about upon deck like a Muscovy duck in the lee scuppers, and a captain was often obliged to flog even against his own inclination. In course of time, the lubberly sons of ---- chafed his temper till the strands parted, and then he became severe, and from severity proceeded to cruelty, till discrimination was foundered, and the cat’s tails were felt by the good man as well as the bad. Now this was very likely the case with Captain P----, and I’m the more strengthened in the likelihoods of it by what followed; for though in the heat of passion reason is shrivelled and scorched up like the fag-end of an exploded cartridge, and a man may be driven to dye his hands in the blood of a countryman, yet when passion has grown cool and the beatings of the heart have become steady and true, like the droppings of the sand in the half-hour glass, none but a murderer,--a detestable, cowardly, craven-breasted murderer,--would bury his knife in the body of youth. Shame! shame!” exclaimed the veteran, as he shook his hoary head, and his cheeks assumed a flush of abhorrent indignation; “shame! shame!--but I forget all this time I arn’t telling you the story. Captain P----, sir, always came out of his cabin arter dinner,--you mind me, sir, _arter dinner_,--and had the hands turned up to reef top-sails; and if they were more than two minutes and a half about it, he flogged the last man who came off each yard. Well, on the day before the mutiny,--I think I told you there was a mutiny, but if not I tell you so now,--on the day before the mutiny, the hands were turned up as usual and the mizen-topmen were rather slack in stays; so he, that’s the captain, your honour,--swore he would flog the last man off the mizen-top-sail yard. Now you must understand, the smartest seamen are always at the yard-arms to haul out the earings, and consequently, unless they can spring over the heads of the other topmen, they must be the last to lie-in. Well, so it happened this evening, and the two captains of the top, knowing that their commander would keep his word, made a spring for the top-mast rigging; in their haste and fear they missed their grasp, and fell on to the quarter-deck. They were both young, active men, and were much beloved by the ship’s company; they had gone aloft full of spirit and vigour, desirous to obey orders; the last beams of the sun, as it just touched the verge of the horizon, shone upon their light but manly frames stretching out to secure the leeches of the sail to the yard; and before the upper limb of the bright luminary had disappeared, they laid stretched on the deck, each a lifeless and mangled corpse! It’s hard lines that, your honour;” and the veteran held down his head in mournful cogitation.

“Hard lines indeed, old friend,” said I; “and really it seems surprising that men should so far forget the social ties, which in every station ought to bind together the brethren of the _dust_, as to commit deliberate acts of cruelty.”

“Mayhap you’re right, sir,” answered the pensioner, “though I can’t say exactly as I understands it all. As for being _dustmen_, we arn’t got no such great matter of dust at sea, because of the soakings we get; and sailors are apt to moisten their _clay_ a bit when they can lay hold of the stuff. But with regard to the cruelty! there unfortunately was too much of it. But to return to my story. The poor lads were carried below, and many a half stifled curse was muttered as their shipmates touched the shattered limbs, and stained their hands in the blood of innocence. A silent, but deep feeling of revenge passed from heart to heart; the face was calm and smooth, but there was a storm in the breast that raged with fury. Well, your honour, the surgeon reported to Mr. Spriggs, the first-lieutenant, that the lads were both dead; and he--that’s the first-lieutenant,--told the captain, who immediately said, ‘Throw the lubbers overboard.’ And this was done,--for to have read any sarvice over them would have been insult and mockery; and thus were two human beings sent out of the world worse than dogs. Not that I think a cast of the parson’s office is of any great consequence to a dead man; but nevertheless, the living like to see things o’that kind done somewhat ship-shape, and besides there’s many a warm glow of friendship lighted up among messmates, when natur stirs within ’em over an ocean grave. The words ‘We commit his body to the deep,’ that deep whose surface is as familiar to a seaman, as the face of the mother is to the infant, and under ‘the sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection,’--oh, your honour, I can’t explain what I mean, but take an old tar’s word that there’s none so sensible of the power of the Almighty as them who are constantly hearing his voice upon the waters, and who so often witness the opening of his hands to loose the tempest.” The veteran paused for a moment or two, gazing intently upon the picture, as if the scene he had described was present to his view; he then continued, “The hands were called on deck and very threatening language used to them, and some were particularly pointed out as the next to be seized up at the gangway. That night, when the watch below was turned in, there was a secret meeting of the petty officers, and a plan was arranged for taking possession of the ship; no one mentioned murder, but each one knew by the wolfish strugglings of vengeance in his breast, that blood must be shed before their purpose could be achieved. The ringleaders were French _refugers_, who were fighting against their own country and had no love for ours,--fellows that it was dangerous to trust; and yet what is very remarkable, the captain does not appear to have suspected evil designs, so confident was he of his own supposed superiority in preserving discipline. But there was one whose eyes looked on with anxious apprehensions,--for like the soundings to the pilot, those eyes had studied the various changes in the features of man to fathom out the depths of the heart,--it was woman, your honour. Fanny Martin was the boatswain’s wife, and though without larning and that sort of eddyfication, she loved her husband and trembled for his safety; for he had had some words with one of the master’s-mates of the name of Farmer, and she strongly suspected Farmer was bent upon mischief, particularly as she saw him during the next day holding mysterious communications with the people, and having the keys of the spirit-room to get up the grog, he had distributed extra allowance amongst the disaffected.

“Well, your honour, during the day she kept her secret, and watchfully observed what was going on. In the evening she sat upon the fokstle with her husband, who was a hasty, passionate man, and as they watched the declining sun bathing his golden beams in the blue waters, she gave such intimations as partially aroused the boatswain to something like a sense of the truth. She talked to him of the village which had been the home of their childhood, she recalled to his recollection their early love,--for women enter all these things in the log-book of memory, with a sort of natural instinct,--and when she had awakened a feeling of tenderness, she pointed out to him the horrible suspicions which tortured her. But though distrust was stirred up, yet the haughty and rough seaman disdained to acknowledge its effects, or take any steps to prevent the mischief that was brewing, like a white squall in a clear sky. And who that looked upon the beautiful creatur,--for she was a sweet ship, your honour,--I say, who could look upon the beautiful creatur as she lay gently rolling on the glassy surface of the light swell, like a handsome woman viewing her shapes in a clear mirror,--who would have thought, in that still, calm evening hour, that the red eyes of murderous vengeance were glaring on the scene? But the sun set upon those who were never to see it rise again, and the mountain islands faded away in the gloom, never more to be gazed at by the doomed ones.

“Night came; the officer of the watch was walking the deck, and the look-outs were alone seen as they stood at their several posts. Suddenly there was a simultaneous shout came rolling up the fore-hatchway, arousing the sleepers and alarming those who were awake. The lieutenant of the watch, Mr. Douglass, ran forward on the main-deck, but was immediately driven back by the shot which the seamen were throwing about. The first-lieutenant hurried to the spot; but whilst descending the fore-ladder, he received a severe wound in the arm from the blow of a tomahawk, and seeing there was no use in going down in the dark amongst ’em, he made a grab at the man next him, and dragged the fellow on to the main-deck. But Farmer, the master’s-mate, rushed upon the lieutenant and rescued the prisoner, who joined his shipmates down below. Both lieutenants returned to the quarter-deck for arms, but the mutineers had taken care to remove the cutlasses and boarding pikes out of the way; the officers could find nothing but a handspike or two, and the first-lieutenant, with no other means of defence than his dirk, again went forward among the men.

“By this time, the marines had mustered aft on the quarter-deck, and the captain, hearing the noise, ran up the companion and found the utmost confusion prevailing; the marines’ muskets and side-arms had been seized, and the sodgers crowded together without knowing what to do, for their officer was hove down sick in his cot. Captain P---- called for the first-lieutenant, and being told that he had gone forward, he immediately followed; the shot, however, drove him back for the moment, but he again advanced along the main-deck with a pistol in each hand, and three or four marines with lights. But I must tell your honour the rest in Hughes’s own words, for he witnessed the whole, and I’m thinking the horrors of that night never left his mind. Whether he took part or not in the transactions was never known, but he afterwards gave evidence agin many of the mutineers, and was the chief cause of their being hung at the fore yard-arm of the old Gladiator, at Portsmouth. I sailed with him three years, and never saw him smile; sometimes he would rave when darkness shut out every object from the sight, and the mind had nothing to rest on but the gloomy imaginings of a tortured spirit. They said he had been well edecated, and I know he was always reading at every moment he was off deck and could spare time from duty,--sometimes for hours together with the Bible in his hands, and at other times with a book he called Wolltear. He used to swear a good round stick, too, but he always spliced a bit of a prayer to the fag-end of his oaths; though occasionally he would turn ’em end-for-end, and begin with the prayer first, knotting it with a double-wall damme, which he afterwards crowned with an Amen.” He paused for a minute, and then he commenced with the following statement of

The Mutiny.

“I was standing ’tween the bits, (says Hughes,) when the first-lieutenant came forward the second time, and his bare dirk was in his hand. ‘Return to your duty, men, and don’t disgrace your country,’ said Mr. Spriggs; but they again shouted, and Bill Oates threw a billet of wood at the officer, which knocked his legs from under him. At that instant the captain’s coxswain rushed at the lieutenant, one of the fokstle men seized the dirk, and together they held him down.

“‘Villains!’ said the lieutenant, ‘mutinous dogs! will you murder me?’ and he made a desperate struggle to rise, whilst his voice seemed to be getting more husky and thick, as if they were strangling him. All at once he gave a shriek, and I thought the running bowline had slipped; then there was a low, moaning, gurgling sound, a convulsive throe of the body,--and he lay quite still. The coxswain and his companion came away just as the captain ran from aft with the lights. The marines raised the poor lieutenant up by the arms, but, oh God! the lights gleamed upon a stream of blood, and a deep gash in the throat opened its yawning mouth,--the head of the lieutenant fell backward between his shoulder blades, for it was nearly severed from the body. The captain gazed at the corpse for a moment, then raising his pistols, he snapped the triggers at Farmer, who laughed,--no, it warn’t a laugh, it was a yell of defiance,--the charges had been drawn.

“The men led by Farmer on the starboard side, and the coxswain on the larboard side, moved in two compact bodies aft, driving the captain, the two lieutenants, the boatswain, and the midshipmen of the watch afore ’em. By the main ladder the latter party faced about, and the captain, seeing the coxswain acting as a ringleader, upbraided him for his ingratitude, for he had always been a great favourite with Captain P----, and had followed him from ship to ship, receiving many marks of kindness for upwards of five years. The coxswain cheered on the men, and darting at the captain, stabbed him severely with a bay’net: this was the signal for massacre. The captain retreated to his cabin, which was soon filled with the mutineers, and every one seemed anxious to have a cut at him. He staggered to his chair and sat down, whilst those who had been the victims of his cruelty and oppression, mangled him in the fleshy parts of his body, and every wound was accompanied by a bitter taunt, or a hellish imprecation. He implored for no mercy, for he saw it would be useless;--he did not deprecate their vengeance, for the hand he had prized most was the first to stab, and therefore it was in vain to hope for life. He continued sternly silent, till he fell from his chair through weakness, caused by the out-flowing of the tide of existence. A horrible shout shook the cabin when they saw him prostrate, and raising him in their arms, they sallied aft and launched the body out of the stern windows. I heard it splash as it fell upon the dark waters,--I heard his shout of ‘murder’ and ‘revenge’ repeatedly as he went astern, but the waves closed over him, and he was seen no more.

“A short but ineffectual struggle took place upon the quarter-deck, where the marines still adhered to the officers; but they were soon subdued, and after being horribly mutilated, were thrown overboard. As soon as the mutineers had obtained possession, Farmer took command, and it was intended to haul in for St. Domingo; but fearing that daylight would bring ’em in with some of the British cruisers, it was agreed upon to up-helm and run down to the Spanish main.

“The work of destruction was not, however, yet complete;--the boatswain had been discovered in his store-room, (where he had concealed himself at the earnest entreaties of his wife,) and dragged upon deck. Poor Fanny Martin implored Farmer to spare his life; but the boatswain set the mutineers at defiance, and swore they would one day or other be frying in hell for their wickedness.

“‘Fore yard-arm, there!’ cried out Farmer, ‘have you got a good seizing for that block?’

“The boatswain turned pale, for he well knew the hint this was meant to convey, though his wife did not; and grasping Farmer by the arm, he exclaimed ‘No, you never can mean that!--Bill, we’ve sailed together and fought together;--did you ever know me shrink from the gale, or tremble at my gun? Here am I,--ready to live or die, just as your breath may turn the vane,--indeed I ax no mercy for myself,--’

“‘Is the yard-rope rove?’ inquired Farmer, trying to free himself from the other’s hold.

“‘Ay, ay,’ was the response from the fokstle.

“‘Then,’ continued Farmer, ‘Martin, say any prayers you know, for by every fiend in ----, you swing up there in ten minutes from this time.’

“‘Consider, Farmer,’ expostulated the boatswain, ‘we’ve been messmates and have shared each other’s dangers; you may take my life, but do not, do not disgrace me in my death;--nay, you cannot hang me like a dog!’

“Poor Fanny had remained silently clinging to her husband during this conversation, insensible to its true meaning; but when the last expression escaped the boatswain’s lips, the truth flashed upon her, and wildly shrieking, she fell at Farmer’s feet, embraced his knees, and in the most frantic and abject terms implored for her husband’s life.

“‘Force her away,’ commanded Farmer, in a voice of thunder to some of the seamen who had gathered round, ‘and, Martin, to your prayers; the sand is fast running through the glass,--to your prayers, man--to your prayers, I say,’ and the wretch laughed like a demon.

“‘Avast, avast, Bill,’ said the boatswain, ‘I am yet an officer, and don’t disgrace the cloth! Stand back, you lubberly son of a ----’ he exclaimed, throwing from him with herculean strength one of his own mates, who was attempting to put the noose over his head, and then addressing the people, he uttered in a clear voice, ‘Shipmates, I only ask to die like a man. If my death-warrant is sealed, what matters it to you whether I go out of the world by a musket-ball or in a sling.--Nay, shipmates, you cannot do it,--and in the presence of her, too,’--his voice faltered for a moment,--‘it would be a disgrace to a blue jacket for ever.--But,’ observing their unchanged countenances, ‘I see my appeal is vain, and I must bear it as a brave man ought. Farmer this will be a leak to sink your soul in that day when we come to pass our accounts. I know but little of prayers; I’ve served my country with faithfulness, and every action of my life is known to the Almighty. If I’ve done my duty to my king,--to my fellow creatures, and to she who now witnesses my murder, God already knows it, so it’s of no use overhauling them consarns now; and if I have not done it, then I take it five minutes will hardly mend the matter. Fanny,’ he continued, softening his voice, ‘you have been my friend, my companion, in fair weather and in foul; they will not, cannot injure you, girl; and when you go back to where I need not name, tell the old folks,’--here his voice again faltered and his lips quivered, which gave rise to an obscene jest from a bystander,--‘Be decent, fellow,’ he continued, ‘a brave man never insults his prisoner. My conscience is clear from having ever wilfully done wrong;--will yours be so when the last death-grapple comes?’

“‘Cease this d---- folly!’ exclaimed Farmer; ‘your time is nearly up, and by heaven--’

“‘Swear not by heaven, Bill,’ said the boatswain solemnly, ‘you have done with it, and it has done with you. Come, Fanny, one clasp to my heart before we are separated,’ and he threw his arms round his sinking wife, who seemed scarce conscious of her existence.

“‘Waist there! is the yard-rope manned?’ exclaimed Farmer.

“‘Ay, ay, all ready,’ was the response.

“‘Will you not take her below?’ said the boatswain beseechingly.

“‘No, no,’ vociferated some of the topmen; ‘she has often seen us dance aloft, and now she shall see you.’

“‘Farmer, will you suffer this?’ said the boatswain.

“‘They will have it so,’ returned the master’s-mate, doggedly.

“‘Then, by that Heaven which you have abjured, they shall be disappointed. I will not perish like a dog.’

“He sprang forward, and with his heavy blows felled several to the deck. At first, old remembrances of his prowess made the mutineers give way before his impetuous attack, but it was only momentary; a dozen cutlasses gleamed in the air; there was a whizzing noise of flourishing tomahawks, and the boatswain fell dead beneath the blows, covered with wounds. Happily his wife had fainted; she had seen her husband struck, but she was spared the pang of witnessing his bloody corpse being thrown overboard, which was done immediately. ‘Oh, God! where is thine eye of retribution!--(Hughes would cry out)--lay bare thine arm! But thou hast poured out the phials of thy wrath, and justice has received her due!’

“Well, messmate, whilst this was passing at the starboard gangway, the coxswain and his gang were making quick work of the other officers. They had secured the two lieutenants, the purser, the doctor, the captain’s clerk, and a little lad--a midshipman, who with the gallantry of riper years stood undauntedly among the rest, and there were also four or five seamen who had made themselves obnoxious to the mutineers; they were all butchered, mangled, cut to pieces, and committed to the deep. The little midshipman was stabbed through the heart,--I saw it myself; the boy fell shouting, and with that shout expired. But there was yet another victim. I told you the marine officer was sick in his hammock, and being weak from long illness could offer no resistance; indeed, he scarcely knew what was doing. Now, messmate, may perdition alight upon their bloody heads for that horrid cruelty! They brought the young officer on deck; his ghastly features, pale and wasted from disease, excited no pity, and with the balance trembling between life and death he was thrown over the taffrail, and left to struggle for a few useless moments, when he sunk beneath the waves, and his murder was added to the black catalogue of hellish guilt.

“Day dawned, and dawned in splendour. The sun upon the horizon shed his red light, rendering the gory deck more bloody in its aspect; and there stood the mutineers, contemplating the horrible deeds they had so lately perpetrated, and scanning each other with looks of silent mistrust, as if every man suspected that his shipmate would betray him. Farmer stood upon the after-gun on the starboard side, one elbow resting on the hammock-rail and his head reclined upon his hand; the flush of intemperance was on his cheeks, and his restless eye wandered hither and thither, as if tracking the crimson stains of carnage that his villany had caused. The horizon was now one flood of clear transparent light, the blue waters marking the line between the dark ocean and crystal sky. The gallant frigate danced merrily before the breeze, but excepting the squaring of the yards, no additional canvass had been spread to accelerate her way.