For Love of Country: A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution, Brady [acx book reading .TXT] 📗

massive lower-deck guns of the Yarmouth, which the pleasant weather permitted them to use effectively, came through one of the after gun-ports of the Randolph, and swept away the line of men on the port side of the gun. Some of the other shot did slight damage also among the spars and gear, and several of the crew were killed or wounded in different parts of the ship; but the Randolph was practically unharmed, and standing boldly down to cross the stern of the Yarmouth to rake her. But the English captain was a seaman, every inch of him, and his ship could not have been better handled; divining his bold little antagonist's purpose, the Yarmouth's helm was put up at once, and in the smoke she fell off and came before the wind almost as rapidly as did the Randolph, her promptness frustrating the endeavor, as Seymour was only able to make an ineffectual effort to rake her, as she flew round on her heels. The starboard battery of the Yarmouth had been manned as she fell off, and the port battery of the Randolph was rapidly reloaded again. The manoeuvre had given the Englishmen the weather-gage once more, the two ships now having the wind on the port quarter. The two batteries were discharged simultaneously, and now began a running fight of near an hour's duration.

Seymour was everywhere. Up and down the deck he walked, helping and sustaining his men, building up new gun's crews out of the shattered remains of decimated groups of men, lending a hand himself on a tackle on occasion; cool, calm, unwearied, unremitting, determined, he desperately fought his ship as few vessels were ever fought before or since, imbuing, by his presence and example and word, his men with his own unquailing spirit, until they died as uncomplainingly and as nobly as did those prototypes of heroes,—another three hundred in the pass at Thermopylae!

The guns were served on the Randolph with the desperate rapidity of men who, awfully pressed for time, had abandoned hope and only fought to cripple and delay before they were silenced; those on the Yarmouth, on the contrary, were fired with much more deliberation, and did dreadful execution. The different guns were disabled on the Randolph by heavy shot; adjacent ports were knocked into one, the sides shattered, boats smashed, rails knocked to pieces, all of the weather-shrouds cut, the mizzenmast carried away under the top, and the wreck fell into the sea,—fortunately, on the lee side, the little body of men in the top going to a sudden death with the rest. The decks were slippery with blood and ploughed with plunging shot, which the superior height of the Yarmouth permitted to be fired with depressed guns from an elevation. Solid shot from the heavy main-deck batteries swept through and through the devoted frigate; half the Randolph's guns were useless because of the lack of men to serve them; the cockpit overflowed with the wounded; the surgeon and his mates, covered with blood, worked like butchers, in the steerage and finally in the ward room; dead and dying men lay where they fell; there were no hands to spare to take them below, no place in which they could lie with safety, no immunity from the searching hail which drove through every part of the doomed ship. Still the men, cheered and encouraged by their officers, stood to their guns and fought on. Presently the foretopmast went by the board also, as the long moments dragged along, Seymour was now lying on the quarter-deck, a bullet having broken his leg, another having made a flesh-wound in his arm; he had refused to go below to have his wounds dressed, and one of the midshipmen was kneeling by his side, applying such unskilful bandages as he might to the two bleeding wounds. Nason had been sent for, and was in charge, under Seymour's direction. That young man, all his nervousness gone, was most ably seconding his dauntless captain.

The two ships were covered with smoke. It was impossible to tell on one what was happening on the other; but the steady persistence with which the Randolph clung to her big enemy had its effect on the Yarmouth also, and the well-delivered fire did not allow that vessel any immunity. In fact, while nothing like that on the frigate, the damage was so great, and so many men had fallen, that Captain Vincent determined to end the conflict at once by boarding the frigate. The necessary orders were given, and a strong party of boarders was called away and mustered on the forecastle, headed by Beauchamp and Hollins; among the number were little Montagu, with other midshipmen. Taking advantage of the smoke and of the weather-gage, the Yarmouth was suddenly headed for the Randolph. As the enormous bows of the line-of-battle ship came slowly shoving out of the smoke, towering above them, covered with men, cutlass or boarding pike in hand, Seymour discerned at once the purpose of the manoeuvre. Raising himself upon his elbow to better direct the movement,—

"All hands repel boarders!" he shouted, his voice echoing through the ship as powerfully as ever.

This was an unusual command, as it completely deprived the guns of their crews; but he rightly judged that it would take all the men they could muster to repel the coming attack, and none but the main-deck guns of the Yarmouth would or could be fired, for fear of hitting their own men in the mêlée on the deck. The Randolph was a wreck below, at best; but while anything held together above her plank shears, she would be fought. The men had reached that desperate condition when they ceased to think of odds, and like maddened beasts fought and raved and swore in the frenzy of the combat. The thrice-decimated crew sprang aft, rallying in the gangway to meet the shock, Nason at their head, followed close by old Bentley, still unwounded. As the bow of the Yarmouth struck the Randolph with a crash, one or two wounded men, unable to take part in repelling the boarders but still able to move, who had remained beside the guns, exerted the remaining strength they possessed to discharge such of the pieces as bore, in long raking shots, through the bow of the liner; it was the last sound from their hot muzzles.

The Yarmouth struck the Randolph just forward of the mainmast; the men, swarming in dense masses on the rail and hanging over the bowsprit ready to leap, dropped on her deck at once with loud cheers. A sharp volley from the few marines left on the frigate checked them for a moment,—nobody noticing at the time that the Honorable Giles had fallen in a limp heap back from the rail upon his own deck, the blood staining his curly head; but they gathered themselves together at once, and, gallantly led, sprang aft, handling their pistols and pikes and waving their cutlasses. Nason was shot in a moment by Hollins' pistol, Beauchamp was cut in two by a tremendous sweep of the arm of the mighty Bentley, and the combat became at once general. Slowly but surely the Americans were pressed back; the gangways were cleared; the quarter-deck was gained; one by one the brave defenders had fallen. The battle was about over when Seymour noticed a man running out in the foreyard of the Yarmouth with a hand-grenade. He raised his pistol and fired; the man fell; but another resolutely started to follow him.

Bentley and a few other men, and one or two officers and a midshipman, were all who were able to bear arms now.

"Good-by, Mr. Seymour," cried Bentley, waving his hand and setting his back against the rail nearest to the Yarmouth, which had slowly swung parallel to the Randolph and had been lashed there. The old man was covered with blood from two or three wounds, but still undaunted. Two or three men made a rush at him; but he held them at bay, no man caring to come within sweep of that mighty arm which had already done so much, when a bullet from above struck him, and he fell over backward on the rail mortally wounded.

Seymour raised his remaining pistol and fired it at the second man, who had nearly reached the foreyard arm; less successful this time, he missed the man, who threw his grenade down the hatchway. Seymour fainted from loss of blood.

"Back, men! back to the ship, all you Yarmouths!" cried Captain Vincent, as he saw the lighted grenade, which exploded and ignited a little heap of cartridges left by a dead powder-boy before the magazine. Alas! there was no one there to check or stop the flames. The English sailors sprang back and up the sides and through the ports of their ship with frantic haste; the lashings were being rapidly cut by them, and the braces handled.

"Come aboard, men, while you can," cried Captain Vincent to the Americans. "Your ship 's afire; you can do no more; you 'll blow up in a moment!"

The little handful of Americans were left alone on their ship. The only officer still standing lifted his sword and shook it impotently at the Yarmouth in reply; the rest did not stir. The smoke of battle had now settled away, and the whole ghastly scene was revealed. A woman's cry rang out fraught with agony,—"Seymour, Seymour!" and again was her cry unheeded; her lover could not hear. She cried again; and then, with a frightful roar and crash, the Randolph blew up.

CHAPTER XXXVII

For Love of Country

The force of the explosion occurring so near to the line-of-battle ship drove her over with irresistible power upon her beam-ends until she buried her port main-deck guns under water; her time was not yet come, however, for, after a trembling movement of sickening uncertainty, she righted herself, slowly at first, but finally with a mighty roll and rush as if on a tidal wave. For a few seconds the air was filled with pieces of wreck, arms, spars, bodies, many of which fell on the Yarmouth. The horrified spectators saw the two broken halves of the ill-fated frigate gradually disappearing beneath the heaving sea, sucking down in their inexorable vortex most of the bodies of those, alive or dead, who floated near. The fire had come in broad sheets through the portholes of the main-deck guns of the ship from the explosion, driving the men from their stations, and, by heating the iron masses or igniting the priming, caused sudden and wild discharges to add their quota of confusion to the awful scene. Pieces of burning wreck had also fallen in the tops, or upon the sails, or lodged in the standing rigging, full of tar as usual, and dry and inflammable to the last degree. The Yarmouth, therefore, was in serious danger,—more so than in any other period of the action,—her little antagonist having inflicted the most damaging blow with the last gasp, as it were; for little columns of flame and smoke began to rise ominously in a dozen places. Then was manifested the splendid discipline for which British ships were famous the world over. Rapidly and with unerring skill and coolness the proper orders were given, and the tired men were set to work desperately fighting once more to check and put out the fire. Long and hard was the struggle, the issue much in doubt; but in the end the efforts of her crew were crowned with merited success, and their ship was eventually saved from the dangerous conflagration which had menaced her with ruin, not less complete and disastrous than had befallen the frigate.

While all this was being done, a little scene took place upon the quarter-deck which was worthy of notice. Something heavy and solid, thrown upward by the tremendous force of the discharge, struck the rail with a mighty crash at the moment of the explosion, just at the point where Katharine, wide-eyed, petrified with horror, after that one vivid glance in which she apparently saw her lover dead on his own quarter-deck beneath her, stood clinging rigidly to the bulwarks as if paralyzed. It was the body of a man; instinctively she threw out her strong young arm and saved it from falling again into the sea on the return roll of the ship. One or two of the seamen standing by came to her assistance, and the body was dragged on board and laid on the deck at her feet. Something familiar in the figure moved Katharine