The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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      After journeying across the plain, we came about midday to the seaboard, and there we spied, lying in a sheltered bay, a long galley with three masts, each dressed with a single cross-spar for carrying a leg-of-mutton sail, and on the shore a couple of ship’s boats with a company of men waiting to transport our goods and us aboard. And here our hearts quaked a bit at the thought of trusting ourselves in the hands of these same murderous-looking pirates. Nevertheless, when our time came we got us into their boat, recommending ourselves very heartily to God’s mercy, and so were rowed out to the galley, where we were very civilly received by an old Moor with a white beard, who seemed well acquainted with Don Sanchez. Then the merchandise being all aboard, and the anchor up, the men went to their oars, a dozen of each side, and rowed us out of the bay until, catching a little wind of air, the sails were run up, and we put out to sea very bravely.

      “Señor,” says Dawson, “I know not how I am to play this part of a sea-captain when we are sent on board an English ship, for if they ask me any questions on this business of navigating, I am done for a certainty.”

      “Rest easy on that score, Evans,” replies the Don. “I will answer for you, for I see very clearly by your complexion that you will soon be past answering them yourself.”

      And this forecast was quickly verified; for ere the galley had dipped a dozen times to the waves, poor Dawson was laid low with a most horrid sickness like any dying man.

      By sundown we sighted the island of Maggiore, and in the roads there we cast anchor for the night, setting sail again at daybreak; and in this latitude we beat up and down a day and a night without seeing any sail, but on the morning of the third day a fleet of five big ships appeared to the eastward, and shifting our course we bore down upon them with amazing swiftness. Then when we were near enough to the foremast to see her English flag and the men aboard standing to their deck guns for a defence, our old Moor fires a gun in the air, takes in his sails, and runs up a great white flag for a sign of peace. And now with shrewd haste a boat was lowered, and we were set in it with a pair of oars, and the old pirate bidding us farewell in his tongue, clapt on all sail and stood out before the wind, leaving us there to shift for ourselves. Don Sanchez took one oar, and I t’other—Dawson lying in the bottom and not able to move a hand to save his life—and Moll held the tiller, and so we pulled with all our force, crying out now and then for fear we should not be seen, till by God’s providence we came alongside the Talbot of London, and were presently hoisted aboard without mishap. Then the captain of the Talbot and his officers gathering about us were mighty curious to know our story, and Don Sanchez very briefly told how we had gone in the Red Rose of Bristol to redeem two ladies from slavery; how we had found but one of these ladies living (at this Moll buries her face in her hands as if stricken with grief); how, on the eve of our departure, some of our crew in a drunken frolic had drowned a Turk of Alger, for which we were condemned by their court to pay an indemnity far and away beyond our means; how they then made this a pretext to seize our things, though we were properly furnished with the Duke’s pass, and hold our men in bond; and how having plundered us of all we had, and seeing there was no more to be got, they did offer us our freedom for a written quittance of all they had taken for their justification if ever they should be brought to court; and finally, how, accepting of these conditions, we were shipped aboard their galley with nothing in the world but a few trifles, begged by Mistress Judith in remembrance of her mother.

      This story was accepted without any demur; nay, Captain Ballcock, being one of those men who must ever appear to know all things, supported it in many doubtful particulars, saying that he remembered the Rose of Bristol quite well; that he himself had seen a whole ship’s crew sold into slavery for no greater offence than breaking a mosque window; that the Duke’s pass counted for nothing with these Turks; that he knew the galley we were brought in as well as he knew Paul’s Church, having chased it a dozen times, yet never got within gunshot for her swift sailing, etc., which did much content us to hear.

      But the officers were mighty curious to know what ailed Captain Robert Evans (meaning Dawson), fearing he might be ill of the plague; however, on the Don’s vowing that he was only sick of a surfeit, Captain Ballcock declared he had guessed it the moment he clapt eyes on him, as he himself had been taken of the same complaint with only eating a dish of pease pudding. Nevertheless, he ordered the sick man to be laid in a part of the ship furthest from his quarters, and so great was the dread of pestilence aboard that (as his sickness continued) not a soul would venture near him during the whole voyage except ourselves, which also fell in very well with our wishes. And so after a fairly prosperous voyage we came up the Thames to Chatham, the third day of August.

      We had been provided with some rough seamen’s clothes for our better covering on the voyage; but now, being landed, and lodged in the Crown inn at Chatham, Don Sanchez would have the captain take them all back.

      “But,” says he, “if you will do us yet another favour, Captain, will you suffer one of your men to carry a letter to Mistress Godwin’s steward at Chislehurst, that he may come hither to relieve us from our present straits?”

      “Aye,” answers he, “I will take the letter gladly, myself; for nothing pleases me better than a ramble in the country where I was born and bred.”

      So Moll writes a letter at once to Simon, bidding him come at once to her relief; and Captain Ballcock, after carefully enquiring his way to this place he knew so well (as he would have us believe), starts off with it, accompanied by his boatswain, a good-natured kind of lick-spittle, who never failed to back up his captain’s assertions, which again was to our great advantage; for Simon would thus learn our story from his lips, and find no room to doubt its veracity.

      As soon as these two were out of the house, Dawson, who had been carried from the ship and laid in bed, though as hale since we passed the Godwins as ever he was in his life before, sprang up, and declared he would go to bed no more, for all the fortunes in the world, till he had supped on roast pork and onions—this being a dish he greatly loved, but not to be had at Elche, because the Moors by their religion forbid the use of swine’s flesh—and seeing him very determined on this head, Don Sanchez ordered a leg of pork to be served in our chamber, whereof Dawson did eat such a prodigious quantity, and drank therewith such a vast quantity of strong ale (which he protested was the only liquor an Englishman could drink with any satisfaction), that in the night he was seized with most severe cramp in his stomach. This gave us the occasion to send for a doctor in the morning, who, learning that Jack had been ill ever since we left Barbary, and not understanding his present complaint, pulled a very long face, and, declaring his case was very critical, bled him copiously, forbade him to leave his bed for another fortnight, and sent him in half a dozen bottles of physic. About midday he returns, and, finding his patient no better, administers a bolus; and while we are all standing about the bed, and Dawson the colour of death, and groaning, betwixt the nausea of the drug he had swallowed and the cramp in his inwards, in comes our Captain Ballcock and the little steward.

      “There!” cries he, turning on Simon, “did not I tell you that my old friend Evans lay at death’s door with the treatment he hath received of these Barbary pirates? Now will you be putting us off with your doubts and your questionings? Shall I have up my ship’s company to testify to the truth of my history? Look you, Madam,” (to Moll), “we had all the trouble in the world to make this steward of yours do your bidding; but he should have come though we had to bring him by the neck and heels, and a pox to him—saving your presence.”

      “But this is not Simon,” says Moll, with a pretty air of innocence. “I seem to remember Simon a bigger man than he.”

      “You must consider, Madam,” says Don Sanchez, “that then you were very small, scarce higher than his waist, maybe, and so you would have to look up into his face.”

      “I did not think of that. And СКАЧАТЬ