THE night was a thing of perfection, on the sea. The moon rode aloft and its light danced merrily on the tips of the waves. A smart breeze pouted the sails on the “Captain Spencer” till she plowed her way like a skimming albatross through the phosphorescence of the southern field of ocean.
On deck the beef-eaters, Adam and William Phipps, with the mate and a jovial boatswain, were in high spirits. They were nearing their goal, after a run which would have awakened some sort of a rollicking devil in a deacon. Captain Phipps had felt a spell of bubbling coming upon him for days. It always did, the moment he dropped Boston out of sight, over the green, serrated edge of the riotous Atlantic. Therefore he had broken off the neck of a bottle of good, red juice, which had lain for a year in the hold of the brig, and this liquified comfort had circulated generously.
The beef-eaters, arm in arm, were now spraddling about the deck in a dance of which Terpsichore had never been guilty, even in her A B C’s of the art. The boatswain was furnishing music from a tin pipe, the one virtue of which was that it was tireless.
At length he altered the tune, or at least, so he said, and after a bar or two of the measure had lost itself in the sails and shrouds, Adam cleared his throat for a song.
“In the Northern sea I loved a maid,
As cold as a polar bear,
But of taking cold I was not afraid—
Sing too rel le roo,
And the wine is red—
For a kiss is a kiss, most anywhere,
When a man’s heart goes to his head.
Ho! the heart of a man is an onion, boys,
An onion, boys, with a shedding skin.
And it never gets old, for you off with its hide,
When you meet a new love, and it’s fresh within!
In the southern sea I loved a lass,
As warm as a day in June;
And oh that a summer should ever pass—
Sing too rel le roo.
And the wine is red—
For my summer, my lads, was gone too soon,
With a man’s heart gone to his head.
Ho, the heart of a man, etc.
In the Western seas I loved a miss,
As shy as the sharks that swim;
And it’s duties we owe to the art of the kiss—
Sing too rel le roo,
And the wine is red—
If a maiden so shy should be took with a whim,
And a man’s heart gone to his head.
Ho, the heart of a man is an onion, boys,
An onion, boys, with a shedding skin.
And it never grows old, for you off with its hide,
When you meet a new love, and it’s fresh within!”
There were more of these verses, one to fit every sea, of which there be more than seven, as the song proved. The beef-eaters and Captain Phipps joined in the chorus, for the boatswain gave it a rare flavor of music.
At the wheel, the second mate had jammed a marlin spike between the spokes, to hold the brig on the wind, and sitting cosily down had gone fast asleep. The lookout aloft had become absorbed in the singing, to which he was bending every attention. In the midst of a chorus, which might and might not have been the finale of Adam’s ditty, there was a sudden alarm that rang from one end to the other of the brig, and all too abruptly a black hulk of a ship, with never a light, came sizzling the brine in her speed, the length of a few anchor-chains away, and made for the “Spencer” with dire intent.
The music ceased as if it had been cut off with a knife. Scuttling swiftly to the side of the ship and then bawling orders, and chasing to the armory in hot haste, Phipps, Adam and the others yelled that a pirate was upon them. The words, like an incantation of marvelous potency, summoned men like so many gnomes, from hatches, companion-ways and fo’castle, on the instant.
The brig’s deck suddenly swarmed with its own men, running hither and thither, shouting, stumbling, swearing, while Phipps and Rust came darting back with arms full of cutlasses, pistols and muskets, gathered helter-skelter, and now thrown with a great clatter upon the planking.
Scrambling here to arm themselves, the sailors heard a crunch, felt the brig shudder beneath their feet and beheld half a dozen iron hooks come flying over the gunwale from the pirate, and saw them jerk snug up to the rail, as the raiders pulled taut on the lines that quickly lashed the two vessels together.
A black cascade of men came leaping from the pirate, landing heavily on the “Spencer’s” deck. Their pistols blazed yellow exclamation points of fire, as the men struck on their feet, and then with a clash of steel on steel, Rust, Phipps and half a score of sailors rushed upon the invaders and a mad scuffle and melée ensued.
Rust was conscious of a few things about him in the confusion. He thought how cold the naked blades looked, slashing in the moonlight; he heard the yells and curses against the background of a slapping sail that was making a sound like a weird alarm; he felt the strength of the big rascal, who was cutting at him with that brute force and disregard for skill which is so deadly to engage. He thought the fellow would slice his saber in two. He lost no time in feinting. The brute of a buccaneer lurched forward to sweep his blade clean through Adam’s body and then suddenly a moonbeam seemed to cleave its way through the ruffian’s neck. He dropped his sword and spun around with his head lolling sideways and went down.
Adam rushed to the taff-rail. The pirate ship was straining at the ropes by which her hooks secured the two black hulks together. Smiting these taut ropes with mad fury, Rust saw the pirate drift away and the gulf of water widen between the two vessels, while the scoundrels aboard the robber-ship yelled a discordant chorus of curses.
Then back into the fray, the din of which was rising, as wounded men smarted and yelled and rushed upon one another anew, like snarling wolves, Adam darted, pistoling a creature who came running upon him and then heaving him overboard as the fellow writhed on the planks.
The sailors of the “Spencer” had somewhat the best of the conflict, which was a match in scuffling hotly all over the deck. Less than a dozen of the pirates had been able to leap aboard before the vessels were apart, and their bawlings for help to their ship had been rendered vain, for the moment, by Adam’s prompt action in cutting the lines. However, the sea-scoundrels were versed in fighting, where the sailors were merely rough-and-tumble sons of Cain whose rage was their principal accoutrement. They were at their adversaries, hammer and tongs. They were wrestling with some, hacking at others, swearing at all. It was a small pandemonium in which it was next to impossible to distinguish friend from foe.
Phipps, like the woodsman from Maine that he was, hewed his way from one group to another, shouting to his men, hoarsely. The beef-eaters, as inseparable as when they were dancing, chose but one man between them, and one such they peeled to a horrid core, as the demon rushed upon their sharpened weapons.
Adam stepped in a crawling line of gore, its head silver-tipped in the moonlight, and slipped till it wrenched him to hold his footing. He saw the sailors crowding three of the pirates to the rail and, joining them, battered the cutlasses from their fists and helped to hoist them bodily over and into the sea.
The din had hardly abated anything of its volume. The scene was one of the maddest activity. But the robbers not already done for, were now at bay against the masts, the capstan or the rail. One tripped backward over a coil of rope. The next instant he was screaming help and murder at the top of his lungs. This he continued even after a dreadful rattle and spluttering came in his voice.
Over the reddened decks one or two wounded creatures were crawling, one wiping gore from his face and flinging it off his fingers. Swords and pistols lay about. One dying human was lying on his side, with his arm extended and his index finger slowly crooked and straightened and crooked again, as if he beckoned to death to come more quickly.
The sail began to slap at the mast again, as the brig swung bow on in the wind and stopped in stays. The croaked curses of the pirates, on their ship, which was now again drawing swiftly toward the “Spencer,” made Adam and Phipps suddenly run to the brig’s brass gun, which was looking dumbly forth toward the pirate.
Rust had filled his pocket with loose powder. The cannon was already loaded. He poured a small pyramid of powder on the vent and he and Phipps, with the combined strength of two giants, slewed the piece around till a ball from the pirate could have been tossed into its yawning muzzle.
From the galley, the cook came running with blazing coals on a shovel. He had been watching the gun. The pirate missed her mark. She came up in stays, just as the “Spencer” got again on the wind. The bows of the robber-craft were almost in touch with the brig.
Adam saw that the cannon would fail to sweep the pirate’s decks—that the shot would be practically wasted, if it went at the gun’s present elevation. With a sudden impulse he leaped astride its smooth, brass nose and bore it down, depressing the muzzle toward the water, just as the crazy cook turned his shovel upside down on the primed vent.
There was suddenly a deafening roar. The concussion shook every man’s feet from under him. The gun leaped backward, like a bucking horse, and Rust went sprawling on the decks, for he had been left abruptly, with no support beneath him.
The shot tore a hole in the pirate the size of a hogshead, squarely on her water-line, in her starboard bow. She came about in the wind and the sea rushed into her hold in a torrent.
A dreadful silence ensued when the air was clear of the detonation. Then a moan from a dying wretch on the “Spencer’s” deck seemed to touch into being a chorus of yells from the doomed pirate, where the murderous crew found themselves armed to the teeth and yet sinking, defenseless, into the very jaws of death. Their sails slackened again and shook with a sound as of funeral shrouds.
The “Spencer” scudded away into the boulevard of silver which the moon was paving with its light. The sinking pirate gathered the cannon’s smoke about her and settled swiftly, but not in silence, into the grave that fitted so snugly about its body.