The Crater, James Fenimore Cooper [good book club books TXT] 📗

and forethought.

As the day advanced the pirates re-commenced their operations. The delay, however, had given the colonists a great advantage. There had been time to communicate with the Reef, and to receive the gun sent for. It had greatly encouraged the people up at the town, to hear that their enemies were in the false channel; and they redoubled their efforts, as one multiplies his blows on a retreating enemy. Pennock sent the governor most encouraging reports, and gave him to understand that he had ordered nearly all the men in from the out-posts, leaving just enough to have a look-out, and to keep the Kannakas in order. As it was now understood that the attack must be on the capital, there was every reason for taking this course.

All the vessels were soon under way again. The pirates missed the Martha, which they rightly enough supposed had gone ahead. They were evidently a good deal puzzled about the channel, but supposed it must be somewhere to windward. In the mean time, the governor kept the Anne manoeuvring around the shoal, in the hope of luring the ship on it. Nor was he without rational hopes of success, for the brigs separated, one going close to each side of the sound, to look for the outlet, while the ship kept beating up directly in its centre, making a sinuous course towards the schooner, which was always near the shallow water. At length the governor was fully rewarded for his temerity; the admiral had made a stretch that carried him laterally past the lee side of the shoal, and when he went about, he looked directly for the Anne, which was standing back and forth near its weather margin. Here the governor held on, until he had the satisfaction of seeing the ship just verging on the weather side of the shoal, when he up helm, and stood off to leeward, as if intending to pass out of the cul-de-sac by the way he had entered, giving his pursuers the slip. This bold manoeuvre took the pirate admiral by surprise, and being in the vessel that was much the nearest to the Anne, he up helm, and was plumped on the shoal with strong way on him, in less than five minutes! The instant the governor saw this, he hauled his wind and beat back again, passing the broadside of the ship with perfect impunity, her people being too much occupied with their own situation, to think of their guns, or of molesting him.

The strange ship had run aground within half a mile of the spot where the twelve-pounder was planted, and that gun now opened on her with great effect. She lay quartering to this new enemy, and the range was no sooner obtained, than every shot hulled her. The governor now landed, and went to work seriously, first ordering the Anne carried through the pass, to place her beyond the reach of the brigs. A forge happened to be in the Anne, to make some repairs to her iron work, and this forge, a small one it was true, was taken ashore, and an attempt was made to heat some shot in it. The shot had been put into the forge an hour or two before, but a fair trial was not made until the whole apparatus was landed. For the next hour the efforts of both sides were unremitted. One of the brigs went to the assistance of the admiral, while the other endeavoured to silence the gun, which was too securely placed, however, to mind her broadsides. One shot hulling her, soon drove her to leeward; after which, all the attention of the pirates was bestowed on their ship.

The admiral, beyond all doubt, was very awkwardly placed. He had the whole width of the shoal to leeward of him, could only get off by working directly in the face of the fire, and had gone on with seven knots way on his ship. The bottom was a soft mud; and the colonists knew that nothing but anchors laid to windward, with a heavy strain and a good deal of lightening, would ever take that vessel out of her soft berth. Of this fact the pirates themselves soon began to be convinced, for they were seen pumping out their water. As for the brigs, they were by no means well handled. Instead of closing with the battery, and silencing the gun, as they might have done, they kept aloof, and even rendered less assistance to the ship than was in their power. In point of fact, they were in confusion, and manifested that want of order and submission to authority, as well as self-devotion, that would have been shown among men in an honest service: guilt paralysed their efforts, rendering them timid and distrustful.

After near two hours of cannonading, during which the colonists had done the pirates a good deal of damage, and the pirates literally had not injured the colonists at all, the governor was ready with his hot shot, which he had brought to something more than a red heat. The gun was loaded with great care, and fired, after having been deliberately pointed by the governor himself. The ship was hulled, and a trifling explosion followed on board. That shot materially added to the confusion among the pirates, and it was immediately followed by another, which struck, also. It was now so apparent that confusion prevailed among the pirates, that the governor would not take the time necessary to put in the other hot shot, but he loaded and fired as fast as he could, in the ordinary way.

In less than a quarter of an hour after the first hot shot was fired, smoke poured out of the admiral's main-deck ports; and, two minutes later, it was succeeded by flames.

From that moment the result of the conflict was no longer doubtful. The pirates, among whom great confusion prevailed, even previously to this disaster, now lost all subordination, and it was soon seen that each man worked for himself, striving to save as much as he could of his ill-gotten plunder. The governor understood the state of the enemy, and, though prudence could scarcely justify his course, he determined to press him to the utmost. The Anne and Martha were both brought back through the pass, and the twelve-pounder was taken on board the former, there being room to fight it between her masts. As soon as this was done, the two craft bore down on the brigs, which were, by this time, a league to leeward of the burning ship, their commanders having carried them there to avoid the effects of the expected explosion. The admiral and his crew saved themselves in the boats, abandoning nearly all their property, and losing a good many men. Indeed, when the last boat left the ship, there were several of her people below, so far overcome by liquor, as to be totally helpless. These men were abandoned too, as were all the wounded, including Waally, who had lost an arm by the fire of the battery.

Neither did the governor like the idea of passing very near the ship, which had now been burning fully an hour. In going to leeward, he gave her a berth, and it was well he did, for she blew up while the Anne and Martha, as it was, were considerably within a quarter of a mile of her. The colonists ever afterwards considered an incident connected with this explosion, as a sort of Providential manifestation of the favour of Heaven. The Martha was nearest to the ship, at the instant of her final disaster, and very many fragments were thrown around her; a few even on her decks. Among the last was a human body, which was cast a great distance in the air, and fell, like a heavy clod, across the gunwale of the sloop. This proved to be the body of Waally, one of the arms having been cut away by a shot, three hours before! Thus perished a constant and most wily enemy of the colony, and who had, more than once, brought it to the verge of destruction, by his cupidity and artifices.

From this moment, the pirates thought little of anything but of effecting their retreat, and of getting out into open water again. The governor saw this, and pressed them hard. The twelve-pounder opened on the nearest brig, as soon as her shot would tell; and even the Martha's swivel was heard, like the bark of a cur that joins in the clamour when a strange dog is set upon by the pack of a village. The colonists on shore flew into the settlements, to let it be known that the enemy was retreating, when every dwelling poured out its inmates in pursuit. Even the females now appeared in arms; there being no such incentive to patriotism, on occasions of the kind, as the cry that the battle has been won. Those whom it might have been hard to get within the sound of a gun, a few hours before, now became valiant, and pressed into the van, which bore a very different aspect, before a retreating foe, from that which it presented on their advance.

In losing Waally, the strangers lost the only person among them who had any pretension to be thought a pilot. He knew very little of the channels to the Reef, at the best, though he had been there thrice; but, now he was gone, no one left among them knew anything about them at all. Under all the circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising that the admiral should think more of extricating his two brigs from the narrow waters, than of pursuing his original plan of conquest. It was not difficult to find his way back by the road he had come; and that road he travelled as fast as a leading breeze would carry him along it. But retreat, as it now appeared, was not the only difficulty with which this freebooter had to contend. It happened that no kind feeling existed between the admiral and the officers of the largest of the brigs. So far had their animosity extended, that the admiral had deemed it expedient to take a large sum of money, which had fallen to the share of the vessel in question, out of that brig, and keep it on board the ship, as a guaranty that they would not run away with their craft. This proceeding had not strengthened the bond between the parties; and nothing had kept down the strife but the expectation of the large amount of plunder that was to be obtained from the colony. That hope was now disappointed; and, the whole time the two vessels were retiring before the Anne and the Martha, preparations were making on board one of the brigs to reclaim this ill-gotten treasure, and on board the other to retain it. By a species of freemasonry peculiar to their pursuits, the respective crews were aware of each other's designs; and when they issued nearly abreast out of the passage, into the inner bay of the Western Roads, one passed to the southward of the island, and the other to the northward; the Anne and Martha keeping close in their wakes.

As the two vessels cleared the island and got into open water, the struggle commenced in earnest; the disaffected brig firing into the admiral. The broadside was returned, and the two vessels gradually neared each other, until the canopies of smoke which accompanied their respective movements became one. The combat now raged, and with a savage warmth, for hours; both brigs running off the land under short canvas. At length the firing ceased, and the smoke so far cleared away as to enable the governor to take