The Jolly Roger Tales: 60+ Pirate Novels, Treasure-Hunt Tales & Sea Adventures. Лаймен Фрэнк Баум

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СКАЧАТЬ they labored all the night through, men near dead with fatigue whose hard fate it was to contend now with pirates and again with the hostile ocean. The skipper managed to stay the foremast and to bend steering sails so that the ship was brought into the wind where her motion was easier. The sky cleared before daybreak and the rosy horizon proclaimed a fair sunrise. How far and in what direction the Plymouth Adventure had been blown by the storm was largely guesswork. By means of dead reckoning and the compass and cross-staff, Captain Wellsby hoped to work out a position but meanwhile he scanned the sea with a sense of brooding anxiety.

      Instead of praying for plenty of sea room, he now hoped with all his heart that the vessel had been set in toward the coast. She was sinking under his feet and would not live through the day. It was useless to toil at the pumps or to strive at mending the shattered upperworks. The men turned to the task of quitting the ship, and of saving the souls on board. It was a pitiful extremity and yet they displayed a dogged, unshaken fidelity. Only one boat had escaped destruction. The pinnace had been staved in by the thunderbolt of a gun and the yawl, stowed upon the cabin roof, was wrecked by round shot. The small jolly-boat would hold the women passengers and the wounded sailors, with the hands required to tend oars and sail.

      Nothing remained but to try to knock together one or more rafts. Captain Wellsby discussed it with his officers and it was agreed that the able-bodied pirates should be left to build a raft for themselves, taking their own wounded with them. This was more mercy than they had any right to expect. The strapping young Devonshire boatswain, with his head tied up, was for leaving the blackguards to drown in the forecastle but the shipmaster was too humane a man for that.

      It was drawing toward noon when the first mate descried land to the westward, a bit of low coast almost level with the sea. In the light air the sluggish ship moved ever so slowly, with canvas spread on the fore and mizzen masts. Spirits revived and life tasted passing sweet. To drift in the open sea upon wave-washed rafts was an expedient which all mariners shuddered to contemplate. It was with feelings far different that they now assembled spars and planks and lashed and spiked them together on the chance of needing rafts to ferry them ashore from a stranded ship.

      Well into the bright afternoon the Plymouth Adventure was wafted nearer and nearer the sandy coast. Within a half mile of it a line of breakers frothed and tumbled on a shoal beyond which the water deepened again. The ship could not be steered to avoid this barrier. Her main deck was almost level with the sea which lapped her gently and sobbed through the broken bulwarks. With a slight shock she struck the shoal and rested there just before she was ready to founder.

      With disciplined haste, the jolly-boat was launched and filled with its human freightage. The boatswain went in charge and four seamen tugged at the sweeps. There were trees and clumps of bushes among the hillocks of sand and a tiny bight for a landing place. The bulwark was then chopped away so that the largest raft could be shoved into the water by means of tackles, rollers and handspikes. It floated buoyantly and supported as many as fifteen men, who did not mind in the least getting their feet wet. Upon a raised platform in the centre of the raft were fastened barrels of beef and bread and casks of fresh water.

      The jolly-boat could hope to make other trips between the ship and the shore but the prudent skipper took no chances with the weather. A sudden gale might pluck the Plymouth Adventure from the shoal or tear her to fragments where she lay. Therefore most of the men, including passengers, were embarked on the raft. Captain Wellsby remained aboard with a few of his sailors and our two lads, Joe and Jack, who had not attempted to thrust themselves upon the crowded raft.

      The pirates were making a commotion in the forecastle, yammering to be freed, but the skipper had no intention of loosing them until all his people had safely abandoned ship. The jolly-boat made a landing without mishap and returned to the wreck as the sun went down. More stores were dumped into it, sacks of potatoes and onions which had been overlooked, bedding for the women, powder and ball for the muskets, and other things which it was necessary to keep dry.

      Captain Wellsby got rid of the rest of his men on this trip, excepting the gunner and carpenter, and these lingered with him as a kind of body-guard pending the ticklish business of releasing the imprisoned pirates and forsaking them to their own devices. The jolly-boat was laden to the gunwales and Jack Cockrell held back, saying to Joe Hawkridge:

      "Why trouble the captain to set us ashore? Let us make a raft of our own. The breeze holds fair to the beach and it will be a lark."

      "It suits me well," grinned Joe. "If we wait to go off with the master, and those sinful pirates see me aboard, I'll need wings to escape 'em. They saw me serve the gun that was filled with spikes to the muzzle. Aye, Jack, I will feel happier to be elsewhere when Cap'n Wellsby unbars the fo'castle and holds 'em back with his pistols till he can cast off in the jolly-boat."

      "Yes, the sight of you is apt to put them in a vile temper," laughingly agreed Jack, "and 'tis awkward for the master to bother with us. Now about a little raft——"

      "Two short spars are enough. There they lie. And the cabin hatch will do for a deck. Spikes for thole-pins, and oars from the pinnace. Unlace the bonnet of the jib for a sail."

      "You are a proper sailorman, Joe. A voyage by starlight to an unknown coast. 'Tis highly romantic."

      They set to work without delay. Captain Wellsby had occupations of his own and no more than glanced at them in passing. Jack insisted on carrying a water breaker and rations, he being hungry and too busy to pause for supper. They would make a picnic cruise of the adventure. Handily Joe reeved a purchase and they hauled away until their raft slid off the sloping deck to leeward. With a gay hurrah to Captain Wellsby, they paddled around the stern of the ship and through the ruffle of surf that marked the shoal.

      In the soft twilight they trimmed the sail and swung at the clumsy oars, while a fire blazing on the beach was a beacon to guide their course. After a time they rested and wiped the sweat from their faces. The progress of the raft was like that of a lazy snail. In the luminous darkness they pulled with all their strength. The wind had died to a calm. The sail hung idle from its yard. They heard, faint and afar, the deep voices of the sailors in the jolly-boat as they returned to take the skipper and his two companions from the ship on which a light burned.

      The lads shouted but there came no answering hail from the unseen boat. They were perplexed to understand how their courses could be so far apart. Presently the night breeze drew off the land, bringing with it the scent of green things growing. Joe Hawkridge stared at the fire on the beach and then turned to look at the spark of light on the ship. The raft had drifted considerably to the southward. Anxiously Joe said to his shipmate:

      "The flood o' the tide must be setting us down the coast, in some crazy current or other. Mayhap it runs strong through this race betwixt the shoal and the beach with a slant that's bad for us."

      "I noted it," glumly agreed Jack. "The jolly-boat passed too far away to please me. And this landward breeze is driving us to sea."

      "No sense in breaking our backs at these oars," grumbled Joe. "We go ahead like a crab, with a sternboard. Think ye we can swing the raft to fetch the ship?"

      "After Captain Wellsby turns the pirates loose and quits her?" scoffed Jack.

      "I am a plaguey fool," cheerfully admitted Joe Hawkridge. "'Twould be out of the frying-pan into the fire, with a vengeance."

      "And no way to signal our friends," sadly exclaimed Jack. "We forgot flint and steel. It looks much like another voyage."

      "Straight for the open sea, my bully boy," agreed Joe. "And I'd as soon chance it on a hen-coop."

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