Chapter LVI: Knuckleduster's Story

"I was first in the smuggling line, and many are the good cargoes of Nantz and Geneva I have run ashore all along the coast between Hartlepool and the Spurnhead, in the bights and bays, clefts and creeks, known only to ourselves and our friends on shore; till once, after a hard chase, our sloop was sunk by a twelve-pound shot that took her between wind and water, from a king's cutter, commanded by old Cranky, who was then in the Preventive Service. This was in Brellington Bay, off the coast of Yorkshire, and down she went, with all her brandy-kegs, and what was worse, all her hands aboard, at least, all except me; so I was taken and condemned to serve seven years in a man-of-war.

"I deserted in the West Indies, and joined some lads of the knife and pistol, who manned a long, low, sharply-prowed polacca, that carried by turns at her gaff-peak the flag of every nation on earth, and had a long brass eighteen pounder amidships, that did some mischief, I can tell you, along the shore of the Spanish Main.

"Tiring of that, I sewed a thousand doubloons, the general stock of the crew, who were all drunk at the time, in the waistband of my trowsers, and shoved off in a whale-boat, on a dark night, when the polacca was creeping under easy sail near the high headlands of Dominica, and worked my way home on board of an old sugar-ship. In England, between Jews and girls about Portsmouth, my doubloons melted like snow on the sea, and I was glad to take the keepership of Sandridge Light, to save me from the press-gang.

"We had some rare doings in that lighthouse, for a night seldom passed without stupid craft being lost; for, d'ye see, the machinery of the lamps often went wrong--at least, so we said--and the devilish lights went out, at the very time they were most wanted. Well, we were burned out of that, as you know; and though I escaped to Compton Rennel, Broken-nosed Bill and Mother Snatchblock, an old girl who was very fond of me, were shrivelled up like a couple of castanas on the hob of the galley fire.

"One night I found myself at Hull, entered as a foremast man aboard of a Quebec timber-ship, when there rose an outcry in the docks that press-gangs of the West-India fleet were out, and that the gates were all guarded by lobsters from the barracks. You know all about that too, for by you I was taken; and I may tell you plainly that for many a day after that I vowed to be revenged for the trick, though I suppose you only did your duty, my young cockerel. You know, also, how I was taken prisoner and employed by that false devil of a French colonel at Martinique, and all about his pretty little wife.

"Well, within a week after the storming of La Fleur d'Epée, a smart French sloop that lay in the carenage of Los Santos was taken by Sir George Grey, of the _Boyne_, to use as a despatch-boat, and on board of her he sent the gunner's mate, with four hands--of whom I was one--to convey letters back to Martinique.

"The devil, who has always taken the greatest interest in me, had surely the entire arrangement of this affair; for the gunner's mate was the man, of all on board the fleet, whom I hated most, for three times he had caught me borrowing his rumbo, and had me triced up to the gangway for a dozen--three dozen for three glasses of grog! Once he missed a purse, and as its alleged contents were found in my hammock by the three fellows who were now shipped with me, I received four dozen, well laid on with a pickled cat, and fainted; but was well soused by buckets of salt water to bring me round again; then I forfeited all pay and prize-money for six months. No sooner did the sloop put to sea, than all these things came crowding into my memory, and my mind was soon made up to skewer the gunner's mate and his three men, to plunder the sloop, run her ashore on the first land I came to, and then trust to Fortune and old Davy for whatever might turn up next.

"Catch me under a commodore's broad pennant again, thought I, if I can get this craft into my own hands, and make a clean run for it!

"We bent new canvass on the sloop in the carenage, and passed through the Rade des Saintes just as the morning gun was fired from La Fleur d'Epée and the union-jack went up where the tricolour had come down a week before. While bending the canvass we had a carpenter's gang aboard from the frigate, and from one of their chests I took the loan of a fine sharp axe, made like an Indian tomahawk. This I hid in my belt, and buttoned my jacket over the blade. We had a fine run all day after leaving Los Santos; the wind was not quite aft; but this all the better suited the trim of a fore-and-aft rig like that of the cutter.

"Evening was closing, and already the Point Jacques of Dominica was visible, and bearing a point or two on our lee-bow. We had the jib and staysail, the squaresail, the fore-and-aft mainsail, and the gaff topsail set. The little cutter skimmed along like a flying-fish, and I had the tiller, when the gunner's mate--who was a handsome young fellow, by the way--came up from the cabin, and swore that I was not keeping her full enough.

"I said something in reply--I don't know what--belike it was 'Belay your jawing-tackle,' not being in a particularly pleasant mood; but he snatched the coil of a rope off a belaying-pin, cast a knot upon it, and laid it across my back five or six times, saying,--

"'D--n you! you rebellious lubber; do you dare to reply to me? Look out, sir, or by ---- I'll have you keelhauled from the yardarm, to teach you to keep your eyes open!'

"I knew that the gunner's mate was a tearing, swearing fellow, who did his duty well, and valued no man a quid of tobacco; so this time I did not reply; but I thought much, and, slipping my right hand into the breast of my pea-jacket, felt the sharp edge of my little hatchet, and whistled with quiet satisfaction, while the gunner's mate, after giving a glance aloft, descended into the cabin.

"On peeping through the skylight, I could see that he was writing by the glimmer of a ship-lantern, and he often paused to look at a portrait. It represented an old lady--his mother, as I afterwards learned. He cut off a lock of his hair with his clasped knife, and put it on the table, to send home to the old Woman, no doubt. At this moment two of my messmates were below; the third was sitting in the lee-bow, smoking quietly, so I lashed the helm with the tiller-rope, and stole softly behind him.

"'Jack,' said I, 'do you think that _is_ Point Jacques of Dominica, for I have my doubts about it?'

"He started, and turning to me, asked if I was unwell, and offered to take the helm, or ask a glass of grog for me; there was something in my eyes or face which startled him, and I _felt_ that they had an expression scarcely human. Yet my tone and manner were calm and collected, though my heart was raging like a hell within my breast.

"'Look!' I repeated; 'is that Point Jacques with the sulphur mountain over it!'

"He turned his eyes towards the coast.

"At that moment I swung my axe aloft--it crashed into the back part of his skull, and Jack fell prone with his face upon the gunnel; I grasped the axe with my teeth, seized him by the legs, and shot him over into the sea, where he sank like a stone.

"This made some noise, however, and one of those below put up his head inquiringly from the fore-hatch; just as he did so, I rushed at him with a yell, and by one blow of the axe cleft him to the nose! He sank to the foot of the ladder on the deck below. On seeing this, his messmate, supposing that the cutter was boarded by French or Caribs, came rushing up with his cutlass, but I met him with one fell swing of my weapon. Missing his head, it fell on his collar-bone; his sword-arm dropped; he sank against the combing of the hatchway, and glared at me with a ghastly and bewildered expression; but as he attempted to crawl on deck, I soon despatched him by repeated blows--for now when I saw blood, mine was boiling like liquid lava.

"With another yell of mad triumph I dragged his body to leeward, shot it into the sea, and it vanished amidst the white foam that smoked under the counter of the cutter, as she flew from wave to wave.

(At this point of his dreadful narrative, Knuckleduster's face glowed purple with excitement; his eyes glared like two hot cinders; his thick coarse nostrils were dilated, and he bit his swollen lips to repress the passionate triumph of the infernal fury he seemed to feel again.)

"As he fell into the sea, my axe dropped with him. If the gunner's mate came up with cutlass or pistols, a death as sudden as any I had bestowed would be my reward! I thought of dropping a cold shot on his head through the skylight, forgetting for the moment that the cutter was unarmed. Then I caught up a handspike from the windlass, and was rushing aft just as he stepped on deck. The first view he had of me, and the blood with which I was covered, seemed to explain everything. He glanced round for a weapon, and then sprang forward, as full of confidence as a frigate with a free sheet, and tried to grapple, barehanded, with me; but retiring a pace or two, to give the handspike full swing, I hurled it again and again on his head and shoulders till he sank powerless and motionless at my feet. Then I tore a ring from his finger, and a watch and purse from his pocket, as being things that were of no use to him or the fishes either; and as he was too heavy for me to lift, I triced up the lee quarter-board, and shoved him through it into the sea.

"Dead men tell no tales--and the fourth deed was done!

"I was alone in the cutter--alone on the sea!

"To be alone was to be independent; to be independent was to be free. I felt no compunction for what I had done; these men were my enemies, and I could have slain them all over again had the double deed been to do.

"I descended to the little cabin, where the lantern was still burning. On the table lay the letter which the gunner's mate had been writing, and the ink was yet wet on it. It was to his old mother at Greenwich, saying all his back pay and prize-money were lodged to her account in London; to keep her heart easy and be jolly, as she would have him by her side again, and as Sir John Jervis had promised him promotion for his conduct at La Fleur d'Epée; that all he could send home was a lock of hair for her and Emmy, and a great deal more bosh of the same kind; so I laughed as I read, and tore it to fritters.

"What! you groan, do you, Mr. Ellis?--groan like the wind sighing through a lee scupper or the galley funnel! Why, you swab of a sojer, we are both fighting men, only that you fight for honour and humbug, I for plunder and pay!

"In a locker I found a bottle of brandy, two case-bottles of skiedam, and some wine; so I set to, and drank from them all in succession--raw, with the jacket off, none of your grog for me--till the whole cabin seemed full of cloven heads, gashed faces, and gunner's mates; and then sinking on the deck, I remembered no more of that night, or it may be of the next day--or, for aught I know, of the next after that.

"On recovering, I found myself in the dark, and half in the water. Thirst--thirst, as if the flames of that hot place the parsons preach about were in my throat, and in my lower spirit-room, assailed me. I groped about for some time without being able to comprehend my circumstances, or where the deuce I was. By the motion and sounds I knew that I was on board some craft, and at sea; but _how_--for her strange position puzzled me. I groped about, half gasping, the while for air, and, as I felt with my hands the details of the woodwork around, gradually, but surely, a horrible conviction came over me. I was still in the cabin of the sloop, but its position was _inverted_; the upper deck was below me, and the lower deck above! I was in mirk darkness, and felt the water rising above my knees. There was a sucking, gurgling sound with every heave of the sea; but this could be easily accounted for by the air, which was confined in the hull of the cutter, and had no means of escape.

"I now understood the whole catastrophe!

"While I had been in a state of stupor, a breeze or squall, mayhap the same squall that foundered your ship, had arisen. Left to herself, the cutter's sails had been thrown aback, her main-boom had jibed; she had been _capsized_, and was now floating, keel upmost, in the sea; floating, I knew not where, with me imprisoned helplessly and dying of hunger, thirst, terror, and suffocation, (but I cannot add remorse,) in her dark, inverted, and waterlogged cabin!

"I felt the fishes, cold and slimy, darting about and touching me. What, if a shark, even of the smallest size, found its way _up_ the companion hatch into my dreadful floating tomb! The idea nearly drove me mad. Amidst water which I dared not drink, I endured the most maddening thirst, and envied the dead body of my second victim, which, or shall I say _whom_, I supposed to be floating in the forehold.

"How long I had been in this wretched condition there were no means of determining, neither could I distinguish day from night. I searched about for the bottles that were left on the cabin table, resolving to drink myself into a state of stupefaction, from which I might never wake more; but sought in vain. I found the locker like everything else, _inverted_, and, of course, empty.

"My thirst was an overwhelming agony; moreover, I endured great cold; my limbs were cramped, and hideous faces, smeared with blood, winked their goggle eyes and grinned at me, amid the dense obscurity which was almost palpable.

"At times it seemed as if the capsized cutter sank deeper in the water; and on these occasions I dared neither move, breathe, or think; for though I had recklessly slain others, I was haunted by an awful dread of dying there.

"Once I thought that the jaws of a huge shark yawned beside me, and in a paroxysm of terror, I swooned, as they seemed to engulf me.

"On recovering, some time after, half-choked and half-drowned, I started up with a howl of despair, and beat madly against the cabin wall with my clenched hands, till they were covered with blood and bruises. Was I deceived, or was it reality? A sound outside seemed to reply.

"I heard a kind of grating noise without, and then the blows of some instrument--an axe or hammer--rang again and again like thunder in my excited ears.

"The blows were redoubled, and I continued to knock and to shout. At last a plank of the inner sheathing was started in the side of one of the starboard berths, and a vivid stream of light burst blindingly into the darkness around me. Springing to it, I thrust up my head and found alongside a boat full of men, who had seen the capsized cutter from their vessel, and had come off to reconnoitre. They had fortunately heard me shouting or hammering in my prison, and by means of a hatchet proceeded to investigate the cause of this noise.

"They drew me out, and then judge of my horror, when the first man whose eyes encountered mine, was the gunner's mate, sitting pale as death in the stern-sheets of the boat with the tiller-ropes in his hands.

"On beholding him, I tried to leap into the sea, but was seized and lashed to the boat-thwarts by a rope, and while the foundered cutter, on the air escaping as if with a heavy sigh, from her cabin, filled and sank out of sight, I was conveyed on board the vessel of my deliverers. She proved to be the _George Third_ of Bristol a privateer brig armed with sixteen 12-pounders, and her crew had picked up the gunner's mate a quarter of an hour after I had chucked him overboard, stunned but _not_ killed.

"I knew that my life was not worth a tester now unless I played a desperate game, and I played it well; for I performed so many pranks, that conceiving they were produced by insanity and remorse, instead of reeving me up to the foreyard-arm as the gunner's mate urged, the privateersmen marooned me on the first land they came to, my old enemy only obtaining leave to bind me well to the stump at which you found me; and now, as I am thirsty after this precious yarn of blood and desperation--this long talkee-talkee as the niggers call it--I shall have one more suck at my old toddy-tree, and then turn into my hole for the night."

Such was the bare narrative of crime related to me by Knuckleduster. He was certainly a pleasant companion to have on that lonely island, and I had no reason to doubt the veracity of his atrocious revelations, for he was too inebriated to invent--if he had the power of invention--and situated as we were, on that wild Caribean isle, he cared nothing for me or my opinion of him.