With Cochrane the Dauntless
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“There is nothing, señor. May God bless you for your kindness!”
“And may God pardon you!” Stephen said; adding as he turned away, “It may be that some day a passing ship may carry you off.”
Then turning he walked slowly back to the shore. Wretch as this man was, he felt a pang at leaving him behind. But he was sure that even if he could overcome his repugnance to him as the murderer of the captain, he could not take him with him, for he would never be safe for a moment. With returning health and strength would come afresh the lust for the gold, which might soon overcome any feeling of gratitude for the treatment that he had received.
When he reached the shore near the boat, he cast off the stern rope and then swam on board, hoisted the jib and foresail, pulled up the anchor, and took his place at the tiller.
The breeze was a very light one, and for a time the cutter moved along but slowly, but as it got beyond the shelter of the land it felt the wind, and began to spin fast through the water. Stephen’s spirits, which had been greatly depressed for the last few days, rose as the little craft heeled to the breeze. Nearly six months had been spent on the island, but at last he was free. As to his course, he had but the sun by day and the stars by night to guide him; but he knew that the vessel had been blown almost due west, and that by heading east he should make the coast either of Chili or Peru. He found to his satisfaction that the boat would keep her course very near the wind, that she came about easily and rapidly, and was certainly swift under her canvas.
She carried no topmast, as they had agreed that, with only three hands, it would be better to avoid all complications of gear. In the middle of the day the wind fell a good deal. At the time he was abreast of a large island, and he presently saw a war canoe shoot out from the shore. Lashing the tiller, he ran down below, brought up the twenty-three muskets, loaded them all, and laid them against the bulwark astern. Then he took his place at the helm again, and looked anxiously across the water in the hope of seeing a dark line that would tell of the breeze freshening again. He knew enough, however, of the winds prevalent among the islands to be sure that it would not strengthen much for the next two or three hours. From the number of paddles going on each side of the canoe he calculated that she must carry from forty to fifty men. His hope was that they would be unacquainted with firearms, and would draw off when he began to fire.
When they came within about four hundred yards he took up a musket and fired, taking aim at some little distance from the side of the boat. At the report the paddles ceased instantly, and for a time it was evident that great confusion reigned among the rowers. While this was going on Stephen reloaded his piece. After some five minutes’ delay the men recommenced paddling, but at a pace that contrasted strongly with the rapid and eager stroke which they had before rowed. Stephen waited this time until they were within two hundred and fifty yards, and then lying down on the deck and resting the barrel on the bulwarks he took a steady aim and fired. One of the men standing up in the bow fell overboard. The paddling ceased again, and a hubbub of voices was heard. As she lay motionless Stephen fired shot after shot. One or two of these hit the canoe, two or three others went wide, but the rest did execution among the crowded mass. By the noise it was evident that some wished to go on, others to retire, and after discharging twelve shots Stephen began to hastily reload the pieces he had fired.
The cessation of fire apparently reassured the war party, for when he had reloaded six of them the paddles again began to work. Stephen at once recommenced firing, and his eighth shot brought down a chief who was standing prominently in the stern, and was evidently in command. His fall had an instantaneous effect. With a yell of terror the natives ceased paddling. Then some began to back and others to row, and the canoe turned slowly round and then sped away at a rate as fast as it had come up, although the number of paddlers was markedly decreased. Satisfied that they would not return, Stephen reloaded all the muskets and then went below for his first meal on board. The cabin would have seemed a poor place to yachtsmen, with its rough beams and timbers and its discoloured planking, but no yachtsman ever felt prouder of a craft than Stephen did of the boat in whose building he had taken a share. There were no bulk-heads, the hull being open from end to end. The water-cask and provisions had been stowed aft the mast.
One of the barrels served as a table, the iron plate that had been taken from the floor of the ship’s galley had been placed forward of the mast on a layer of sand three inches thick, and a forecastle hatch had been placed above it to serve as an exit for the smoke. A store of wood, the result of their ship-building operations, was piled in the bow. Stephen did not trouble to cook, but boiled some water over some chips of wood, made himself a cup of coffee, or rather the half of a small gourd of coffee, ate a melon and a biscuit, and presently went up on deck again. At three o’clock a light breeze sprung up, and this, an hour later, strengthened to a heavy blow. Stephen sailed on until midnight, then reefed the mainsail and fastened the boom amidships, lowered the foresail and hauled the jib to weather, and having thus laid the cutter head to wind lay down on the deck and slept soundly until daybreak. The next day he passed two or three islands, but all at a considerable distance. Beyond these no land was visible, and he hoped that he was fairly beyond the Archipelago with its hostile natives.
Day after day passed without incident. Stephen always lay to at night for a few hours, and calculated that the rate at which he sailed during the remaining eighteen was, allowing for calms, some four knots an hour. On the sixth day the appearance of the sky changed, and Stephen prepared for bad weather by fully reefing his mainsail. The clouds banked up rapidly and the wind rose. It was southerly, and the boat tore rapidly through the water. Two hours later Stephen let the foresail run down, and under the reduced sail the boat went more lightly and easily over the rising sea. By evening he had stowed the mainsail altogether, and slackening the jib sheet held on his course. By midnight it was blowing a gale. He raised the gaff four or five feet, put lashings round the sail to prevent its blowing out, and then hauling on the weather sheet let her lay to, taking now his place at the tiller, so as to be able to bring her head up did she pay off the wind.
It was an anxious night, but the little craft was lightly ballasted and buoyant, and rose to the seas without taking any great quantity of water over the bows. For two days the storm continued. Stephen never left the tiller during that time save to run below at intervals and snatch a mouthful of food. After the first two or three hours he had felt no fear whatever as to the ability of the craft to weather the gale, but it was a long strain, and he was deeply thankful when the wind abated sufficiently for him to be able to hoist the reefed mainsail again and to lie to comfortably. As soon as this was done he went below, and slept for twelve hours. The sun was shining brightly when he awoke, a light breeze was blowing, and save for a long swell the sea had gone down. He indulged in a hearty breakfast before proceeding on his way. Then he shook out the reefs in the mainsail, hoisted it, got up the foresail, slacked off the weather sheet of the jib, and again headed east.
One morning ten days later he saw the sun rise behind a broken outline instead of the line of the horizon, and knew that this could be nothing but the hills of the mainland. Lofty as these were he might be still a hundred and fifty miles from them, but the weather was fair, the wind fresh, the boat travelling at six knots an hour, and by mid-day to-morrow he would be close to land. Whether it was Chili or Peru that lay ahead of him he had no means of knowing, but he believed it was the former, for he had headed rather to the south of east and felt sure that he should strike the coast somewhere on the long seaboard of Chili. He was the more convinced of this as two days before he had seen an island far to the north of him and guessed it to be either San Felix or San Ambrose, and had shaped his course rather more to the south in consequence. That night he was too excited to turn in as usual, but held on his course. By morning the land lay little more than twenty miles away, and he recognized at once the outline of the hills that he had passed when sailing north, and knew where Valparaiso lay, some fifty miles further south. He changed his course accordingly, and at four o’clock in the afternoon dropped his stone anchor a hundred yards off the quay of the Chilian port.
CHAPTER XIII.
PRIZE-MONEY
Stephen busied himself in stowing away his sails. By the time he had done so a small crowd had collected on the quay looking with surprise and wonder at the little craft with its unpainted sides and rough appearance. In a short time a boat with a port official rowed alongside, and stepping on deck the officer looked round, in surprise at seeing only one person on board. Stephen had, before arriving at the port, donned a clean suit of linen trousers and jacket; his cap was out of all shape, and the badge on its front had faded into a blur; he was barefooted, and his hair had grown almost to his shoulders. The aspect of the boat was almost as surprising as that of its solitary occupant. There were no signs of paint visible, the work was rough, the stanchions of various sizes, some new in appearance, and some blackened with age and sea-water.
“Who are you, señor?” the official asked, “and what craft is this?”
“The craft has no name, señor, though we who built her thought of naming her the Deliverer. I myself am Stephen Embleton, flag-midshipman to Admiral Lord Cochrane. May I ask if the admiral is now in port?”
“He is,” the official replied.
“May I beg you to send off a shore boat by which I may despatch a message to the admiral?”
“Your story is a strange one,” the official said gravely. “I myself have seen the young officer, you state yourself to be, in company with the admiral, but I am bound to say that I do not recognize you.”
“I am not surprised at that,” Stephen said with a smile. “In the first place, I should imagine that my face is the colour of mahogany from wind and sun; in the second, my hair has not been cut for six months; and lastly, this suit of clothes, though excellent in its way, is scarcely in accordance with my rank.”
“I will myself row off to the admiral’s ship,” the official said, “and convey your message to him. What shall I tell him?”
“I thank you, sir. Will you please say that Stephen Embleton is on board this craft, that I am alone, and for certain reasons cannot leave it, and pray him either to come himself or to send a trusted officer with a party of sailors to take charge of it.”
The official saluted him gravely. He was by no means sure of the sanity of this young fellow, but his curiosity had been aroused by his appearance and that of his craft, and he therefore condescended to undertake a mission that at ordinary times he would have scorned. Stephen watched the boat row alongside a frigate anchored a mile away. Shortly afterwards he saw a stir. A boat was pulled up to the accommodation ladder. A party of sailors then took their places in her, and two figures came down the gangway and the boat pushed off. A few minutes later it reached the side of the cutter. Stephen saluted as Lord Cochrane sprang nimbly on board.
“My dear lad!” the admiral exclaimed, grasping his hand, “I gave you up for lost many months ago, and we have all mourned for you deeply. Where have you been? what have you been doing? what on earth have you done to yourself? and where did you get this extraordinary craft?”
“I have been cast away on an island some twelve hundred miles to the west. Only three of us were saved. We built this craft between us. One of my comrades is dead, the other remains on the island, and I have sailed her back single-handed. I think this, sir, will account for my somewhat strange appearance.”
“Fully, fully, lad. Well, you must tell me all about it afterwards. Why did you not come direct in the boat to my ship instead of sending for me?”
“Because I was afraid of anyone else coming on board until you had sent someone you could trust to take possession of her?”
“Why, bless me!” Lord Cochrane said with a laugh, “I should not have taken her to be as valuable as all that. She is most creditable as a specimen of the work of three shipwrecked men, and I should say from her appearance as I rowed up to her that she was fairly fast. She might be worth a good deal as an exhibition if you had her in the Thames, but she would not fetch many hundred dollars here; though I have no doubt that, when properly painted up and in trim, she would make an excellent little coaster.”
“It is the cargo and not the ship, sir, that is valuable.”
“What does it consist of?”
“It consists of gold, sir. There are five hundred thousand dollars stowed in boxes.”
The admiral looked at him in astonishment.
“Five hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Embleton! Are you in earnest?”
“Quite so, sir; the ship you sent me off to with twelve hands was laden with military stores and money for the payment of the Spanish troops. I was fortunate enough to get on board and capture her just before the storm burst. When she was wrecked, on an island of whose name I am ignorant, her stern, where the gold was stowed, was fortunately in only four feet of water, and we had, therefore, no difficulty in getting at the boxes and carrying them on shore, where we buried them until we had built this craft.”
The admiral ran down the companion into the cabin and saw the boxes lying side by side along the length of the keel.
“I congratulate you heartily,” he said to Stephen, “this is by far the richest prize that has fallen into our hands. You did perfectly right in sending for me, for, in faith, I would not trust this treasure out of my sight on any consideration, until I handed it over to the Chilian government, after taking care to deduct the fleet’s share of the prize-money. It will be welcome, I can tell you, for the pay of the fleet is terribly in arrear. The treasury is empty, and there are no means of refilling it. Properly speaking, the whole of the fleet’s share of the money should go to you, but the rules of the service are arbitrary.”
The conversation had been in English, and the admiral going on deck ordered the officer, who had remained sitting in his gig, to tow the cutter alongside the flag-ship. The officer at once gave the necessary orders. Two of the men jumped on board and hauled up the anchor, and nothing but the presence of the admiral prevented a burst of laughter among the boat’s crew as the stone came to the surface. As it was, there was a broad grin on their faces. The two men resumed their places in the boat, and the cutter was towed to the side of the flag-ship. Lord Cochrane ordered a whip to be sent down with slings, and himself superintended the bringing up of the boxes, whose weight in comparison to their size excited lively surprise among the sailors who brought them up to the deck. The slings were placed round them one by one, and they were hoisted to the deck of the frigate, and carried into the admiral’s cabin.
After the last box had been swung up, the admiral and Stephen went up the accommodation ladder to the deck. The officers were gathered round the boxes wondering at their weight.
“What should you say they have in them, gentlemen?” Lord Cochrane asked.
“I should say that they contained specie,” the captain said, “had it not been out of the question that so great an amount could be collected in Chili.”
“I am happy to inform you, gentlemen, that those boxes contain Spanish gold, and that they are a lawful prize captured from the enemy by a boat’s crew from this ship, under the command of my flag-midshipman, Mr. Embleton. Every man on board, therefore, in proportion to his rank, will come in for a share of prize-money, and for this you will have to thank your fellow-officer here.”
Hitherto none of them had recognized Stephen, but had been wondering who the strange figure was, that had come on board with the admiral. They still looked almost incredulous, until Stephen stepped forward and held out his hand to his special friends and addressed them by name.
“Why, is it really you, Don Estevan? We had all given you up for lost. We are glad indeed to see you again.”
The other officers all came round and heartily greeted Stephen, all asking questions together about his long absence and the wonderful prize of which the admiral had spoken.
“I will answer as many questions as I can presently,” Stephen protested; “but, in the first place, I must have a bath, and change my clothes, and have my hair cut. Are my things still on board, and is anyone else in my cabin?”
He learned to his great satisfaction that his cabin was as he had left it.
“For weeks the admiral hoped that you would return. There was, indeed, much anxiety about the boat when we saw the storm coming on. Whether you had gained the brig before it burst, of course none of us knew. We could only hope that you had done so. The storm was a terrible one here. While some thought that the brig might have foundered at once when it struck her, it was certain that if she weathered the first blow she would have to run for it. It was one of the worst storms, people here say, that has been experienced on the coast for many years, alike in its fury and in its duration, and all agreed that she would have been blown at least a thousand miles off the land before the gale spent its force. As the wind continued in the same quarter for a long time it would have taken the brig weeks to beat back against it, but when two months passed without your return, all concluded that you had either sunk before gaining the ship, or that she had gone down in the gale, or been wrecked among some of the islands into whose neighbourhood she must have been blown. However, the admiral continued to hope long after the rest of us had given you up. At the end of two months he appointed me his flag-midshipman to fill your place, as he especially said, until your return. This being the case, I have not shifted my berth, and your cabin has remained unoccupied.”
One of the officers gave orders that a tub should be at once taken to Stephen’s cabin filled with water, and that the ship’s barber should hold himself in readiness when called upon.
When Stephen came out, an hour later, dressed in uniform, and with his hair a reasonable length, he was told that the admiral had requested his presence in his cabin as soon as he was dressed, but had ordered the message not to be given to him until he came on deck.
“Now, lad, let me hear the whole story,” he said; “but first fill your glass from that bottle. I should imagine that you have almost forgotten the taste of wine.”
“I have not touched it since two days after we were wrecked, sir; but on the whole we have not done at all badly with regard to food.”
“In the first place, what has become of your boat’s crew?”
“They are all dead, sir. Some were killed or washed overboard during the storm; the rest were drowned at the time of the wreck.”
“That is a bad business. However, begin at the beginning, and tell the story your own way. I have plenty of time to listen to it, and the fuller you make it the better.”
Stephen related the story, from the time of his leaving the ship until he had anchored in the bay. As he saw that the admiral wished to have full details, he told the story at length, and the sun was setting by the time he brought it to a conclusion.
“You have done wonderfully well, lad,” Lord Cochrane said warmly when he had ceased speaking, “wonderfully well indeed; no one could have done better. The arrangements throughout were excellent, and you showed a noble spirit in delaying your departure for four days in order to assist the poor wretch who had murdered your companion, and would have murdered yourself in his greed for gold. I do not praise you for bringing the treasure back here; it is the conduct that I should expect from every British officer; but, at the same time, it is clear that you had it in your power to leave it buried on that island, so that you could have gone back in some craft, and brought it away with you. I shall represent your conduct in the strongest light to the government. By the rules of the service, of course, you are entitled only to a junior officer’s share of the ship’s portion of the prize-money, but I shall certainly suggest that your case shall be specially considered. Now, I will take you ashore with me. I am going to a dinner given by the president, and I shall create a sensation when I state that I have, after deducting a fifth for the fleet’s share of the prize-money, four hundred thousand dollars to hand over to them.
“I shall take you first to my wife. She will be delighted to see you again, and so will the children. You can give her an outline of your story. If you had been three days later you would not have found me here. For the last four months I have been endeavouring to get my ships fitted out, but in vain, and I am putting to sea no stronger than when I came back, and there can be no doubt that, profiting by their last lesson, the Spaniards will have made Callao stronger than before. However, we will do something which shall be worthy of us, though I fear that it will not be the capture of Callao.”
A few minutes later the admiral’s gig was alongside, and the admiral, his captain, and Stephen went ashore. Lady Cochrane greeted Stephen as warmly and kindly as her husband had done, and the children were exuberant in their delight at the return of their friend.
“He has a wonderful story to tell you, my dear,” Lord Cochrane said. “It has taken him more than three hours to give me the details, and you will have a greater treat listening to them this evening than I shall have at this state dinner.”
“It was too bad, Don Estevan,” one of his friends said to Stephen next morning, “that the admiral should have taken you on shore with him yesterday after you had been with him all the afternoon. We had been looking forward to having you all to ourselves, and hearing your story. You may imagine that we are all burning with curiosity to hear how it is that you came back all alone in that curious craft astern, and, above all, how you have brought with you this prize-money. All we have heard at present is that the whole of the boat’s crew that went with you are dead. I promised the others that I would not ask any questions until our morning’s work was over, so that we could hear your story together.”
“It is just as well not to tell it by driblets,” Stephen said. “It is really a long story, as it consists of a number of small things, and not of any one special incident. It can hardly be cut as short as I should like to cut it, for I am but a poor hand at a yarn.”
After the usual work of exercising the men at making sail, preparing for action, and gun and cutlass exercise had been performed, anchor again cast, ropes coiled up, and everything in apple-pie order, the Chilian officers rallied round Stephen, and, taking his seat on the breech of a gun, he told them the story, but with a good deal less detail than he had given to Lord Cochrane. This relation elicited the greatest admiration on the part of his hearers. The fact that he and two others alone, and without any tools save swords, should have built the stout little craft astern, and that he should, single-handed, have sailed her some thirteen or fourteen hundred miles was to them nothing short of marvellous. All had, the afternoon before, gone on board of her, and had seen that she only wanted paint to be a handsome little boat. Unaccustomed to manual labour, it seemed wonderful that three men—two of whom were officers—should have even attempted such work with only the materials from a wreck to build with.
Stephen had passed very lightly over his four days’ nursing of Jacopo, but this incident surprised them more than anything else, save the construction of the cutter. That, after the man had murdered the captain and attempted to shoot Stephen, with the intention of obtaining possession of the whole of the gold, the latter should have nursed him back to life instead of finishing him at once, seemed to them an incomprehensible piece of folly.