With Cochrane the Dauntless

CHAPTER XX.

FRESH TRIUMPHS

No sooner had Stephen reached the landing-place than he hired a native boat to take him off to the flag-ship, which, with several of her consorts, was lying some little distance off the shore and in front of the Naval establishment. Several others were close in by the wharfs.

“They look in a slovenly state indeed,” he said to himself, “infinitely worse than the Chilian ships did when we first got out there. There are two or three by the flag-ship that look in a fair state of order, but the rest might be a fleet of big colliers, with their yards up and down anyhow, their rigging all slack, and everything dirty and untidy.”

In ten minutes they were alongside of the flag-ship, whose appearance presented a strong contrast to that of the others.

Telling the boatman to bring up his bundle after him, Stephen ascended the ladder. A petty officer came up to him as he stepped on to the deck.

“What is your business?” he asked him in Portuguese, which Stephen now spoke fluently.

“I wish to speak to the admiral.”

The sailor looked at him from head to foot. “Have you an appointment with him?”

“I have not, but he will see me, nevertheless, when he knows that I am here.”

On looking round while the man hesitated, Stephen saw the admiral speaking to an officer in captain’s uniform. The petty officer, after some hesitation, went up to the officer on watch, who at once came over to Stephen.

“You want to speak to the admiral?”

“I do, lieutenant. I see him yonder, and if you will be good enough to inform him that Lieutenant Embleton is here and ready to report himself for duty, you will find that he will not mind being disturbed.”

The officer looked at him doubtfully. “You have neither the appearance of an Englishman nor of a lieutenant,” he said.

“That may be, sir, but it does not alter the fact.”

At this moment the captain left the admiral’s side and walked forward.

“What is it, Lieutenant Romoro?” he asked as he passed them.

“This gentleman,” and he hesitated over the word, “says that he is Lieutenant Embleton, and desires to speak to the admiral.”

“Lieutenant Embleton!” the captain repeated in English; “not the admiral’s flag-lieutenant in Chili, surely? If so, Lord Cochrane will be delighted to see you; he has spoken of you to me several times. He believed you to be dead, and but yesterday he was saying how he missed your services.”

“I am the man, sir,” Stephen replied. “I have been eighteen months in crossing the continent, and to get here from Para had to make the voyage to the Cape de Verde and back again.”

“I congratulate you on your escape,” the captain said, shaking his hand warmly. “My name is Crosbie, I am Lord Cochrane’s flag-captain, I will take you to him at once.”

The admiral had left the deck and retired to his cabin. Captain Crosbie took Stephen there, and at once knocked at the door and entered.

“Excuse my troubling you now, admiral,” he said, “but my object will, I am sure, excuse my intrusion. I have a gentleman here that you will, I know, be glad to meet.”

Lord Cochrane looked earnestly at Stephen; he had not seen him since he had sent him down to Valparaiso after the capture of the Esmeralda. The two years that had elapsed had greatly changed his appearance, and he had grown from a tall lad of eighteen into a powerful young man. A flash of recognition came into his face, he made a step forward and exclaimed: “Good heavens, can it be—”

“Stephen Embleton, sir. I have come on board to report for duty.”

“My dear boy, my dear boy,” Lord Cochrane said, holding out both hands and wringing those of Stephen, “I am glad to see you indeed. I thank God that I see you alive and well again, which I never dreamt that I should do, for I thought that you had died or had been tortured to death in the dungeons of that accursed Inquisition at Callao. But where have you sprung from, where have you been all this time, by what miracle are you here?”

“I escaped the night before I was to be handed over to the Inquisition,” Stephen replied, “then finding it impossible to make my way down to Chili I crossed the Andes and have come down the Amazon. I had an unfortunate adventure which detained me for eight months; at least, I thought it unfortunate at the time, but I cannot think it so now, as I have just arrived in time to join your lordship here.”

“And now, admiral, if you will excuse me I will be off to my duties,” Captain Crosbie put in. “I could not deny myself the pleasure of bringing in Mr. Embleton, but his story will assuredly be a long one, and, as you know, my hands are pretty full.”

“Well now, lad,” the admiral said when they were alone, “sit down and tell me all about it. Here I am with my old worry again, but worse. I thought the Chilians were as bad as could be in matters of business, but these fellows are infinitely worse. I have had no end of trouble with them, and have been obliged to threaten, three or four times already, to resign. As it is, I have only been able to get four ships out of a dozen ready, and even these, with the exception of this ship, are in a shameful state, and deficient in every necessary. What is worse, I cannot even rely upon the crews, which I always could do in the Chilian service. Well, before you begin your story I must tell you that I did not forget you, but tried every means in my power to effect your release. When I got a letter from my wife mentioning that you had sailed in that store-ship that had been so long missing, I set about making inquiries, and sent a boat ashore with a white flag to inquire if any such ship had been wrecked on the coast, for there had been a heavy gale at the time that she was making her passage. I was informed that she and all hands had been lost.

“From some deserters, however, I learned that this was a lie; a few sailors had got ashore and had been killed. I then sent a frigate down to the place where the wreck had been and sent a letter ashore to the governor. He replied that an English officer had been captured, and had been sent to Callao and handed over to the authorities there. When the frigate returned with the news I sent a furious letter ashore to the governor. He replied that he was not before aware that the officer in question had belonged to the ship that was wrecked, and that the person I spoke of had escaped from prison and had not been recaptured. A few days after this a fresh governor was appointed at Callao. I wrote to him, and he gave me substantially the same reply that the other had done. However, I opened negotiations with a merchant there and got him to make inquiries. He sent word that he had talked to some of the prison officials, and that they told the same story as the governor had done; they said that you had, in some extraordinary way, overpowered two prison officials and had made your escape. Of course I did not believe this, and supposed that instructions had been given to all the people connected with the prison to tell the same story. So I sent again to the merchant, and told him to use whatever means were necessary to get at the truth, as bribery will do anything on that coast. He found that the new governor on taking the command had found a book with a record as to the disposition of the prisoners on leaving. Some were marked merely discharged, others as returned to their regiments, many as having died in prison. There were also a large number of official documents relating to these matters, and among them the governor found an order for you to be handed over to the Inquisition on the day following that on which you were said to have escaped. As soon as I heard this, it seemed to me that there was no doubt about your fate. You had been handed over, and this cock-and-bull story was only intended to throw dust in my eyes if I captured Callao. I therefore sent a demand to the Peruvian authorities for your release and surrender, saying what I had learned; and in reply they declared that I had been misinformed, for that you had escaped, and that the authorities of the Inquisition denied positively that you had ever been handed over to them.

“I wrote a strong letter in reply, saying that no one ever believed the word of an inquisitor, and that if it should ever be my good fortune to capture Callao I would burn their buildings to the ground, and hang every official, priest, and layman belonging to it. There the matter dropped. Of course I did not get the chance of carrying my threat into execution, but if I had done so I should have certainly carried it out; and even if I had found afterwards that I had been mistaken about you I should not have regretted it, for they have deserved the fate a hundred times over. Well, tell me about your escape; the story afterwards must keep. You know the state the Chilian navy was in when I took the command; well, this is much worse, and the factions here are even more bitter and unscrupulous than they were in Chili, impossible as that may seem to you.”

“The affair was a very easy one, sir, for it was by bribery rather than force that I got away.” And he then related the manner in which he had been befriended by Don Filippo Conchas and his cousin.

“A noble young fellow!” the admiral exclaimed when he brought his story to a conclusion. “Of course there are fine fellows among the Spaniards as among other nations, but we have heard only of their worst side, that told by people who hated them bitterly. Well, I shall like them better in future, and I hope some day that I may run across that young fellow and his wife—no doubt she is his wife long ere this. Let us call Crosbie in. He is a fine fellow, and I am very certain he will be heartily glad to have you with him, for at present he has not a soul he can rely on.”

On Captain Crosbie’s arrival the admiral told him that Stephen was ready to set to work at once, in any capacity in which he could make himself useful.

“I shall be glad indeed of his aid,” the captain said, “for there is not an officer or man who knows his work.”

“Knows!” the admiral repeated; “there is not a man who has the faintest idea of it. I should have liked Stephen, above all things, for our first lieutenant, but our complement is complete.”

“I think you might manage it,” Captain Crosbie said after a few minutes’ reflection. “No captain has yet been appointed to command the Carolina. You might appoint Morales to it. He belongs to a powerful family here, and they would be pleased at his promotion. So it might be a politic step, as well as serving our purpose by making a vacancy for Embleton.”

“That would be just the thing,” the admiral said.

“I am sure I should be delighted,” Captain Crosbie went on, “for Morales is of very little use; and with Mr. Embleton to aid me I should be able to get the crew into something like shape in half the time that it would take me to do it single-handed.”

“Very well, then; the thing is done. I have full powers to make any changes and appointments in the fleet, so I will write out the orders at once. If you will send Lieutenant Morales in here, Captain Crosbie, I will announce his promotion to him and tell him to take up his duties at once, and then Embleton can enter upon his as soon as he has provided himself with a uniform.”

Stephen was about to leave the room with Captain Crosbie when the admiral stopped him.

“I have no doubt that you are short of cash, Stephen,” he said, “and just at the present moment of course you cannot draw upon your bankers in England, for your father will naturally have long since believed you dead, and the account will be transferred to himself; so I must be your banker for the present. Here are two hundred and fifty dollars. Tell the fellows who make your uniform—Crosbie will tell you where to go to—that you will pay them something extra to get one suit finished by to-morrow. We shall sail in a couple of days.”

After thanking the admiral, Stephen retired just as the lieutenant entered the cabin. On asking the captain as to the address of the best firm of tailors the latter said:

“I am just going ashore myself to see about some stores from the dockyard, and will go there with you. As I am known to them they will probably sharpen up more than if you, a stranger, went by yourself.”

As they rowed ashore Stephen learned from Captain Crosbie that the fleet ready for sea consisted, in addition to the flagship, of one fine frigate, the Piranza, the Maria da Gloria, a converted merchantman mounting thirty-three small guns, and the Liberal, about the same size.

“We take with us two old vessels that will be used as fire-ships, and the Carolina and another ship that are not yet equipped will join us later on. We are first going to attack Bahia, where we shall have all our work cut out. The Portuguese have three line-of-battle ships, five frigates, five corvettes, a brig, and a schooner. The worst of the thing is that we cannot depend upon our crews. I think that our ship will be all right, but the others are all largely manned by Portuguese, who are as likely as not to mutiny directly we get near the enemy, and to take the ships over to them. Besides that, our equipments are simply miserable—the cartridges are all unfit for service, the fuses of the shells are absolutely untrustworthy, the powder is wretched, the marines know nothing either of working the big guns or of the use of the small ones, and are moreover an insolent, lazy set of rascals, and consider themselves as something infinitely superior to the sailors. Lord Cochrane will doubtless add to his own great reputation by the deeds he will perform here, but assuredly he will find that he will be harassed well-nigh to death by the different factions, and will have difficulties placed in his way at every turn, will be unable to obtain justice for his crews, and will ere long find his position altogether insufferable. The emperor is well-intentioned and honest, but is altogether devoid of any real power, and he is as completely in the hands of the clique of schemers round him, as was the President of Chili. There is not an English officer now in the service of Don Pedro who would not be delighted to leave it if they could obtain an appointment at one-fourth of the pay elsewhere.”

On the 3rd of April the little squadron set sail. They arrived off Bahia on the 1st of May, and the Portuguese fleet at once sailed out of the harbour to meet them. The force was altogether too formidable to be engaged by four ill-manned and ill-equipped ships, but Lord Cochrane manœuvred so that he was able with his flag-ship to cut off the four rearmost ships of their fleet. He signalled at once to his consorts to join him in attacking these vessels, but to his astonishment and anger the signal was disregarded, and not one of them made the slightest movement to join him. Hoping that when they saw him actively engaged they would bear down and take part in the fight, he opened fire upon the Portuguese; but the guns and powder were alike so defective, and the crews so incapable of handling them, that he did but little damage to the enemy and was forced to draw off. He found that the Portuguese on his other three ships had absolutely refused to obey their captains’ orders, and even on the flag-ship the Portuguese employed in sending up ammunition from below, had so wilfully delayed in their work that the guns were often idle for want of ammunition.

He wrote at once a very strong letter to the Brazilian authorities as to the manning and equipment of the ships, and declared that he could do nothing until these matters were remedied, for that it was necessary for one-half of the squadron to be incessantly watching the other. However, it was not in his nature to wait until his complaints were attended to, for his experience had already taught him that this would be to condemn himself to protracted inactivity. He consequently sailed to the nearest Brazilian port, and there transferred all the best men and the most serviceable fittings to his flag-ship and the Maria da Gloria. Leaving the other vessels to remain in port until properly refitted and until their captains could obtain disciplined and sufficient crews, he sailed with the Maria da Gloria for Bahia. As the commander of the smaller ship, Captain Beaurepaire, was an active and efficient officer, good results were soon obtained by the change. Several small captures were made of vessels coming in with supplies. The port was completely blockaded, and the Portuguese squadron, cowed by Cochrane’s great reputation, dared not venture out to engage him.

After remaining there for three weeks the admiral returned to the port to see how the other ships were getting on, and in six days was back again. The Portuguese fleet had ventured out, but as soon as Lord Cochrane arrived they withdrew again. A week later information was obtained from a ship captured while attempting to leave the port, that the Portuguese were seriously thinking of evacuating the place altogether, before the fire-ships that were, they had learned, in course of preparation, should arrive. The admiral despatched the Maria da Gloria to the port to lay in water and victuals for three months. The other ships there were also to be victualled, and the Piranza was directed to join at once. In the meantime Lord Cochrane determined to increase, if possible, the alarm of the Portuguese, though he had now only the flag-ship off the port.

The enemies’ fleet lay ten or twelve miles up the bay under shelter of the guns of the fort.

“As to attacking them by daylight,” he said when talking over the matter with Captain Crosbie and Stephen, “it would be altogether too desperate. Were this ship manned with English sailors I would do it without hesitation, and even with Chilians a good deal might be effected; but although the crew have gained greatly in discipline since we got rid of the Portuguese, I could not count upon them. The Chilians had gradually gained experience and confidence in themselves, but our crew are altogether new to the work and could not be trusted to fight against such enormous odds. Still, by going up at night we might get in among their fleet unnoticed, and might even capture one or two vessels. At any rate, it would heighten their alarm even to know that we had got up through the channel into their midst.”

As soon as it became dark on the evening of the 12th of June the Pedro Primeiro sailed up the river, sounding her way as she went. Absolute silence was observed on board the ship. Unfortunately just as they reached the outermost vessels the wind began to drop so light that the ship could hardly stem the tide that was running out; however, she made her way some little distance further. Even in the darkness so large a ship was noticed; the alarm was given and the drums beat to quarters on board the Portuguese ships of war. In answer to a hail as to who she was the answer was given, “An English ship”. This satisfied the Portuguese; but as the wind had now altogether failed and the tide was growing in strength nothing more could be done. An anchor was dropped, but with enough chain to allow it to drag on the ground, and stern foremost she drifted out from the shipping and regained her old position at the mouth of the river. But although no material advantage had been gained the moral effect more than answered the admiral’s hopes. When it became known that his ship had been in the midst of the Portuguese squadron, something like a panic took place on board, and this was increased by the news they received that the fitting out of the fire-ships had almost been completed.

Dependent, as the garrison and shipping were, almost entirely upon provisions brought by sea, they were already very seriously inconvenienced by the blockade. Accordingly, on the 2nd of July the whole squadron of war-ships, and seventy merchantmen and transports carrying the troops, evacuated Bahia. All on board the flag-ship were delighted when they saw the great fleet sail; for even Lord Cochrane had felt that even with the whole of his little squadron it would be a desperate undertaking to attempt to attack them when supported by the guns of their forts; now, however, that they were at sea he could at least harass them, for if the ships of war turned upon him he could bear away. Already an immense service had been performed, for the evacuation of Bahia practically handed over the whole of the province of that name to Brazil. The admiral had not been joined by the two ships left in port, but the Maria da Gloria had returned, and the Carolina and Nitherohy, which had been left at Rio to complete their outfit, came up three hours after the Portuguese sailed.