The Filibusters, Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne [best book clubs .TXT] 📗

“So do I; but they won’t. Carew’s far too sharp, and knows how to handle men far too well to let experiments of that kind succeed. Besides they’ve all to win and no grievance against him. Did you find out where he was going to next?”

“No, I didn’t. They gave us sou’-sou’-west as a course, and said they’d be practising a gun or two in our direction directly, and hoped we wouldn’t be in the way to stop the shot. They’d brought four two-inch guns and a Maxim across with them from the other steamer in their boats. So we steamed off. Besides, I’d no wish to wait. I wanted to get to Los Angeles to see if his order on the Treasury there would be honoured.”

“You might just as well have taken your bill to New York or Paris.”

“I know,” said the owner of the Clarindella. “I guessed it when I heard this Carew was a baronet. I’ve always been brought up to look upon titles with suspicion. It has been part of my political creed.”

“I can imagine it would have been,” said Fluellen drily. ” Well, my good sir I haven’t the advantage of knowing your honoured name you may be congratulated on having engaged the most wooden-witted, perish-her-enemies advocate that could be found on all the seas to forward your claims with the help of this venerable relic of a gunboat; and though you have by your foolish talk very nearly made him commit a wanton act of war against a friendly power, I fancy the danger of that will be pretty well past when I drive a few of the facts you have given me into his pompous head.”

The shipowner started with a perspiring face, “What! ” he stuttered, ” are you a friend of this Carew’s? I thought any friend of Mr. Birch”

“No, don’t run away with that mistake, I’m an enemy of Carew, fast enough, and so is Birch. There are no two men living more anxious to see the scamp respectably hanged. But at the same time we have other interests. We have both of us a considerable stake in Sacaronduca.”

“I don’t care a fig for any of your rotten Central American republics,” the man burst out angrily.

“No,” said Fluellen. ” Rule Britannia, floreat yourself, and let everything else rip. I quite understand your sentiments, and in a way I rather respect them. But, if you please, we will not discuss the question any deeper. We shall not agree over it.”

With the exception of Captain Meadey, whom I disliked cordially, the after-guard of the Rabbit were as nice a set of clean-run young Englishmen as one could wish to meet anywhere. Fluellen, according to his usual habit, kept pretty much to himself, and spent his time brooding. I didn’t, I found myself billeted amongst the wardroom mess, and set to work to have as good a time as possible. All my tales were new to them liners’ smoking-room yarns don’t drift out to the navy much and so I had some three thousand good ones very much at their disposal; and I don’t mind owning I did my best to amuse. In the old professional days it had been part of my duties as purser to be the most popular man in the ship, and I had cared for such popularity with a mixed crowd for what it was worth. Here in the Rabbit’s wardroom it was different; I was amongst gentlemen; and it filled me with a pleasant glow that never grew stale to see that they really liked me.

But living aboard the Rabbit was not altogether a yachting cruise. There was the eternal cleaning, and drilling, and devilment of everyday routine; and, moreover, there was the chasing of Carew and his Clarindella, and that all hands aboard were as keen upon as though their lives were staked on catching them.

We were not long in getting on to their trail. North, along the coast, seemed the most probable course, and so that was given. We’d a fair wind of it. Topgallant masts had been sent up, stunsails booms rigged out Her Majesty’s are the only ships that have carried stunsails during the last dozen years and every stitch of available canvas spread. It was amusing for a merchant sailor to see how these navy chaps took ten men for a one-man job. But there was no denying the fact that they squeezed the most there was of pace to be got out of their old tub; and that, with her poor old relics of engines grunting and grinding along over their humble six, made somewhere very near nine knots to the hour.

“By Jove,” said one sub-lieutenant to me, “if she were only clean, she’d be doing her ten and a half this minute. But it is a long time since she was docked, poor old girl, and there are weeds six feet long on her bottom, not to mention barnacles. Look at her copper when she lifts. By Jove, did you ever see anything so foul?”

A merchant barque of the same size would have had -four men and a mate to each watch, and with the watches eighty strong here they made light work of the sail handling. We sighted our port; we sailed straight into the anchorage with every stitch set, and then had everything sent down in the gaskets almost whilst she rounded up to an anchor. It was fine, really. I had never come across anything quite so smart before. And I have seen a good few windjammers, too, from a steamer’s rail.

A boat-boom swung out, a boat was lowered, manned, and armed, all with the same clock-work speed of course, they were strong enough manned to do everything at once, and I expect they wanted to let the merchant service see the best they could do and off a party went to the beach under the gunnery lieutenant. We saw them land officer in full rig, marines in pith helmets, jacks in straw hats, and all the rest of it and then back again, as hard as they could split, with the ten oars still keeping beautiful time. They came alongside out boat-hooks, toss oars, hand the side ropes to the officer, and all the rest of it, just like a play and the gunnery lieutenant went formally aft with his report I almost expected to hear Meadey demand to see it in writing before he condescended to accept it officially. But he did not do that; when the pinch came the man was keen enough, and I gave them credit, they got their old relic of a barque under weigh again at the top of her speed as quick as one wanted to see. But, of course, as I say, they were tremendously heavily manned.

It seemed that we had missed the Clarindella at this place by a short half-dozen hours. Carew had paid his call, had got himself formally acknowledged President of Sacaronduca, and had given the good people ashore the alternatives of having their town sacked and burned or of “subscribing ten thousand dollars to his military chest within half an hour.” As he had quite sufficient force to make good his threats, the money was raked together and El Presidente Carew clapped it on his ship and steamed away not more than half a dozen hours before our arrival. Where he had gone he naturally enough had not said; but as his smoke was last seen trailing out from the northwards, it was concluded that he was going to raid the coast-towns up there seriatim; and northwards accordingly the Rabbit went in pursuit.

Fluellen got the gunnery lieutenant aside. Had he picked up any news of Don Juan Carmoy? Why yes, he had. Don Juan had gone ashore with the landing party from the Clarindella, but had not returned on board. He had helped at the ” coup de main,” an’d afterwards with an escort of six men had ridden off up-country. The gunnery lieutenant concluded that it was a case of thieves falling out, and congratulated Don Juan on his diminished chance of ornamenting the Rabbit’s main yardarm. What did Fluellen think?

“Well,” said Fluellen, “knowing a bit about the country, and knowing a bit about the ways of Carmoy, and the directions where he has interests I’m sorry to say I don’t agree with you in the very least whatever. I wish I did. If there had been disagreement between those two there would have been shooting also. No, what’s happened is this: Carmoy’s off to raise a guerilla force on land. This sea work is only a temporary affair till they rake a little hard cash together. They are succeeding at it finely, they are strong enough to have divided forces already; and presently you’ll see Carew will retire from the salt water and try his luck on land again.”

“If the Rabbit doesn’t catch him.”

“If the Rabbit does not catch and stop him,” Fluellen agreed. ” I devoutly hope she may. Then we shall have more chance of running down the other scoundrel ashore.”

But as the hours wore on it became more and more evident we had lost the trail again after that first picking it up. This part of the Sacaronducan coast which we were searching is dotted with small towns and villages, and we called at them all in turn, but nowhere had they any news of the Clarindella. Both Fluellen and I endeavoured to give Meadey some items of local knowledge, and some suggestions as to where the missing raider might have disappeared to; but the utmost we could extort from him was a pompous assurance that he was captain of H. M. S. Rabbit, and would take advice from no one except officers in his own service who chanced to be his seniors.

Accordingly we worked our way up the coast, persisting in these useless calls till we got to a place where there was a telegraph office, and there received news by wire that Carew was industriously raiding the dye-wood exporting towns to the southward. Upon which, of course, it was ‘bout ship and back again as hard as we could go.

We came upon the Clarindella at last in Pueblo Bay, just as her people were in the midst of making negotiations with Pueblo town. It was said afterwards that Carew was going to leave her at this point whether we turned up or no; but there is no doubt that our coming was quite unexpected and unprepared for.

Pueblo Bay is not narrow, but it has deep water only between the two lines of buoys which run down its middle. The town is some mile and a half up a small estuary, at the further end, which has an easy bar at its mouth.

Our glasses showed us the Clarindella from a long distance, and probably theirs showed us to them about the same time. Of the Rabbit’s people no one in the least doubted that this desperate fellow Carew would fight his stolen steamer to the last gasp, and they could not have had any entertainment ahead that would have pleased them better. But there was no individual stepping out of rank. The machine-like discipline went on as usual, and when the Rabbit was cleared for action and got into fighting trim it was all done exactly as it had been practised a thousand times before, exactly according to textbook and Admiralty instructions.

Myself, I had very strong doubts as to whether there would be a fight at all. Carew was not particular at the best of times, and just now he was pretty desperate. But even he, I judged, would not go so far as to make himself a perpetual outlaw by deliberately trying to destroy a British war-ship. He was a man of