Chapter XVIII: Overboard

The _Tartar_ ran rapidly with the breeze. Her white canvas bellied out before it; her tall and slender topmast, that tapered away aloft like a fishing-rod, bent as she rolled from side to side; and all her running gear was blown out in the bend, while far ahead streamed her long red pennant, rippling on the air like a coach whip. The land was seen low at the horizon; but I knew not what part of the coast we were off.

Jack Joyce shared his breakfast with me, and by his interest I obtained pen, ink, and paper, from the sergeant of marines, to write a letter home. While thus engaged, under the lee of the cutter's revolving gun, with a cask for a desk--writing with aching heart and head, a tremulous hand, and eyes full of tears--I was teased and mocked by the pressed men, who peeped over my shoulder, punched my right elbow, and squirted tobacco juice from their quids upon my paper. This continued for some time, until I lost all patience; and snatching up a marlinspike, gave one fellow a blow on the head, which rolled him senseless into the starboard scuppers. After this ebullition of wrath, which Jack Joyce warmly commended, I was permitted to finish my letter (Heaven only knows what agony of spirit I poured out in its pages) in peace. I consigned it to the care of Jack Joyce, who faithfully promised to have it transmitted ashore for me.

Postage was not in those days what it is now. Whether Jack ever sent it I cannot tell, as it never reached its destination.

Two or three days passed monotonously away. We kept close in shore, as Mr. Cranky, though not afraid of French cruisers, was anxious to avoid them, for his small cutter being filled with men like a slaveship, was not in fighting order. We were now off the coast of England, and on the third night saw the light on Flamborough Head sparkling like a star among the darkening waves on our lee bow.

Ages seemed now to have elapsed since I had been torn from my home, while the events of years ago seemed to have occurred but yesterday!

While we were still creeping along the shore, Jack Joyce came to me one evening, about sunset, when we were tacking with a head wind, in dangerous and shoal water.

"Can you swim, Master Ellis?" he asked, in a whisper, as we leaned over the lee bow together.

"Yes," said I.

"Well?"

"Like a fish," I replied, confidently.

"That is lucky--for I have a thought in my head."

"What is it?" I inquired, anxiously.

"You must escape to-night."

"To-night--when--how?"

"Hush!--yes, to-night, or your chances afterwards won't be worth a piece of spun yarn. We are drawing near Yarmouth, and as there are lots of the North Sea fleet there, the chances are ten to one that all our pressed men and boys will be turned over to the first line-o'-battle-ship that hoists a signal as being short of hands. And once there, there you must remain, as the impressed are never allowed to leave the ship; they might as well be chained to the guns, so you must leave the cutter to-night. Do you see that spark away down to leeward among the waves just now?"

"Yes," said I breathlessly, as the marine pointed out what really seemed to be a mere spark that was lost, and seen alternately, as the yellow and frothy breakers of the shoal-water rose and fell between it and the cutter.

"That is Sandridge Light. I know it well, and the channel we must pass through. We shall run close in to the light, and put the cutter about when within a quarter of a mile of it. Then is the time to let yourself gently into the water, float till we are some distance off, and then strike out for the lighthouse. I shall be the sentry aft, so don't be afraid if an alarm is given, and I am ordered to _fire_ after you. Strike out, I say, boldly and steadily for the lighthouse steps, and God bless you, Master Ellis. When you get home, tell the old woman--I beg pardon--I mean the good lady, your mother, what poor Jack Joyce the marine did for you, and she'll mayhap think of me sometimes of a Sunday."

He withdrew abruptly, lest we might be seen conferring together, and left me to my own anxious and bewildering reflections. My heart beat wildly and my head grew giddy with hope and the anticipation of baffling my captors and tormentors, for I viewed Lieutenant Cranky and the crew of his white slave ship as both.

A haze was fortunately setting over the water--I say fortunately for me, as the long clear twilight of June might have made my projected escape a perilous experiment. This haze rendered the approaching night more dusky, and compelled Mr. Cranky to take sail off the cutter.

His boatswain, a weather-beaten old salt, who knew all the dangerous shoals they were among, as if they were his own patrimony, now took the wheel, and I saw his iron frame planted firmly on the deck, while the red glare of the binnacle-lamps shone on his nut-brown visage, his bearded chin, and bare brawny throat, as he fixed his eyes in succession on the compass, the cutter's sails, the rising light of Sandridge, and a single star that twinkled alternately on each side of the topmast, above the cross-trees.

Close by, stood his crusty commander, wearing a tarpaulin hat and coarse pea-jacket, watching intently the compass-box with his solitary but fiery orb, to see how the cutter headed, and uttering from time to time deep growls of satisfaction, as his old shipmate, with unerring hand, kept her full and steady.

"If this wind holds," said he, "in an hour we shall be past Sandridge Light--it rises fast--and then we shall be out of this infernal shoal-water. What a devil of a bubble it kicks up under the counter!"

In an hour then, thought I, my fate will have been decided; I shall be drowned or free!

So cloudy or hazy had the sky become, that I was not without the most cheering hope of achieving an escape. The waves had become black as ink, though flecked with sandy foam, as they went in long and crested rollers over the shoaly ridges. I could nowhere see the land; but I cared not for that--the beacon light was my guiding star, and the bourne of all my present hopes!

The cutter was running towards it, close hauled on the larboard tack, and I soon made out the beacon to be a huge octagonal edifice of timber, planked, tarred, and pitched, like a ship's side, and placed upon a long ridge of sand, from which it rose on piers of wood and iron, inserted deeply in a submerged rock. I discovered all this by a night-glass, through which the old quartermaster, with wonderful condescension, permitted me to peep for a moment. I then crept away; and after securing a strong line to one of the starboard swivel-guns, coiled up the slack of it, and lay down close by, pretending to be asleep, till the tender altered her course, which was to be my signal for starting.

In about a quarter of an hour--a quarter that seemed like an age to me--I heard Mr. Cranky hoarsely give the orders requisite for putting the _Tartar_ about. The wheel was sharply revolved, the gaff topsail flapped heavily, and still more heavily did the immense boom swing round as it was jibed, and the smart cutter, when her square sail yard was braced sharp up, fell off on the other tack. At that moment, when all was hubbub and noise--bracing and hauling and coiling up ropes--I grasped my line, and slid noiselessly, and feet-foremost, into the sea! I instantly let go the rope, with a prayer of thankfulness on my lips, as if, in doing so, I was leaving for ever the place of my captivity.

I felt myself borne along with the cutter, and pressed against her side for some seconds; and it was only by exerting all the strength with which despair induced me that I was enabled, by striking out vigorously, to release myself from this strange influence, by which, in the water, a greater body always attracts the lesser. Then I lay still, floating, and scarcely daring to breathe, as the cutter passed me; anon I struck out, as Jack Joyce advised, "boldly and steadily," for the beacon, the three lights of which cast three long and tremulous lines of radiance over the frothy shoal water that rolled around it.

I had scarcely taken three strokes, when the boatswain's voice exclaimed, over the cutter's quarter,--

"Shorten sail--a boat, a boat--man overboard!"

"Pipe away, the crew of the dingy," added the quartermaster.

"A deserter!" roared Mr. Cranky, with one of his terrible oaths; "come back, you rascally porpus--heave to, or it will prove the worse for you! Fire, sentry--fire, and send him to Davy Jones or the devil, with an ounce of lead in his skull for ballast!"

In terror I looked back, and saw a marine (but not Joyce, who unfortunately had been posted forward), in the act of levelling his musket at me. There was a flash as he fired, and I heard the ball strike the water, from which it sent up a spout near me. With a tact, for which, under all the circumstances, I give myself no small credit, lest another of these blue pills might follow, I uttered a loud cry as if struck by the shot, and dashed about in the water, as if disabled and sinking.

"There, d--n you, take that whoever you are, and go down to feed the fishes," I heard the old savage Cranky cry, with a triumphant laugh, as the cutter passed slowly and solemnly, like a tall and shadowy spectre, into the gathering mist, and disappeared, leaving nothing astern but her white wake and me.