Chapter IX

Lord! how they did blaspheme!

And foam and roll, with strange convulsions rack’d,

Drinking salt water like a mountain stream,

Tearing and grinning, howling, screeching, swearing,

And with hyena laughter, died despairing.

Byron.

In the last chapter but one, we left Willis on his way once more to the coast of Africa. We will now join him, as he is about starting back for Cuba, with a cargo of negroes, purchased with the money Don Manuel had sent him.

His crew being too small to do any thing more than navigate the schooner; and having been unable, on the coast, to increase their number, he had, prior to taking in his cargo, dismounted his guns, and stowed them, with their carriages, in the hold, under the ballast.

This change of weight he now found altered much and greatly retarded the schooner’s speed; but it was now too late to make any alterations; and it was with greater anxiety than he had ever felt on any former voyage that he looked out for men-of-war. He could neither fight, nor confidently trust to his vessel’s speed; and he was particularly anxious to get in safely with this, if he could land them, his last cargo of Africans.

The schooner was within ten days of making land, and had not seen a vessel. All hands were congratulating themselves on their good fortune, when, far astern, and to windward, a sail was discovered just on the verge of the horizon. It did not appear larger than a speck, and to any but most practiced eyes, would have been invisible. Had the Maraposa been in her usual trim, they never would have had a clearer view of the stranger; but now, to Willis’s mortification, the distant vessel gradually became visible; first the royals were seen, then her topgallant-sails, and in three hours they could even make out the head of her courses; enough to confirm the feet of her being a man-of-war, and she gaining rapidly on the schooner.

Though in consequence of the Maraposa’s being so much smaller, it was not probable that the stranger had yet observed her, but was only steering in the same direction. But Willis knew that if he had not yet been seen, if the distance was still lessened, he could not escape, and it behooved him to increase his speed by all means, and avoid being chased. Captured he had sworn never again to be, let the consequences be what they might.

How to accelerate the Maraposa’s way was a question of some difficulty. Already was every stitch of canvas that would draw, and some that did not, set; and there was nothing on deck he could throw over to lighten his vessel, except his anchor and cable; as the other had been left in the harbor at Havana, she had but one; the guns he could not get at, covered as they were by the ballast and provisions in the hold; and feeling uncertain how to act, he called his mate to him to get his opinion.

“Well, Mateo, this is the squalliest prospect we have ever had, and the first time we could neither fight or run. What do you think we had better do? That fellow astern will be down on us before night, unless we can get along faster.”

“Why, sir, the only way we can make the Butterfly fly faster, is by taking some of the load off of her; and there is only two ways we can do that—and it will have to be done quickly to be of any avail—for that chap astern is coming along as if he carried a tornado with him.”

“What can we start over to lighten her?” asked Willis.

“Why nothing but the niggers, or the water—either of them would do it. Those ten pipes of water, if they were overboard, would let the schooner along as she used to go; but without the water the niggers would die. So that I think, sir, we had better heave over half the niggers, and half of the water.”

This the mate said with as much nonchalance as if he had been recommending the drowning of a score of hogs; for he had been engaged in the slave-trade for many years, and had learned to regard negroes, not as human beings, but as he would any other species of merchandize with which the vessel might be loaded. And as to his thinking it murder, or a sin to kill a “woolly-head,” as he called them, it never entered his mind, and he would have jerked the whole lot overboard, had it been necessary for his own safety, with as little compunction as he would so much old junk.

But Willis’s mind had been too much under the influence of better feelings, for the last few weeks, to think of drowning in cold blood, one hundred and fifty mortals, if they were black, to save his own life; he therefore resumed the conversation with Mateo by saying, —

“I know it will be a chance if we don’t lose all the negroes if we start over the water, but I cannot think of drowning the poor devils; so they will have to take their chance of dying with thirst, and you must start over all the water but one pipe.”

The water was in large pipes, some lashed amid-ships, abaft the fore-mast, some on the quarter-deck, and a couple on the forecastle. The casks being unlashed, and the bungs turned down, soon emptied themselves of their contents, and the schooner sprung forward as if she felt the relief, and was soon speeding along at her old rate of sailing, which by the next morning had left the strange sail so far astern that she was out of sight.

Though he had succeeded in eluding pursuit, Willis’s troubles still came thick upon him. The cask of water that had been left was the one from which they had already used, and it was found to have not more than sixty gallons of water in it to last over three hundred men ten days, in the heat of the tropics.

Willis called up his crew and proposed dividing it out equally amongst all hands, negroes and all, and then there would have been hardly a gill a day for each man, but enough to sustain life. The men would not hearken to him, swore they were not going to be put on such short allowance for the sake of the d—d niggers; and said if there was not enough to go round, to throw the blackbirds into the sea.

Willis, by persuasion, at last succeeded in getting his men to agree to be allowanced to half a pint of water per diem, and let him portion the rest out to the negroes as he chose. This he did impartially, as far as it went; but the quantity was so small that the slaves, confined as they were constantly in the hold, on account of the smallness of the crew, could not exist upon it—and the hold of the slaver became a perfect pandemonium. Daily the poor Africans were attacked with brain fever, and, perfectly crazy, would shout, yell, cry, sing, and shuffle about as well as their fetters would permit, until they were relieved by death; and so many died each day, that the whole crew were kept busy getting them out of the hold, and heaving them into the ocean. Ere land was made, the last of the three hundred were dead; and Willis, putting into the first bay he came to on the coast to re-water, was worse off than when he started for Africa, having made nothing, and spent all the money given him by Don Manuel, and which he wished to repay.

His hopes of being able to quit the traffic, which was now becoming odious to him, were thus deferred; for the money he had used, and which he was most anxious to refund, was an additional argument in his mind for taking another voyage to the coast; and hoping it would prove more profitable, and enable him to quit the trade then forever, he made sail again, and running into the same river in which we first found the Maraposa, he left her there, in the charge of Mateo, and disguising himself, for fear of being recognized by De Vere, Don Manuel, or Francisca, he proceeded by land to Havana, for the purpose of increasing his crew, and obtaining funds from some of his friends to enable him to get another cargo.

In a few days he had been able, by constant exertion, to enlist from amongst the numerous desperadoes that are ever to be found in Havana, forty new men, nearly all good sailors. The bravery and skill of Willis being well known amongst the merchants who were engaged in the slave-trade, he found no difficulty in borrowing from them the amount of money he wanted, on the security of the cargo he was going to bring.

The day he was to leave Havana, Willis was strolling along the streets, and accidentally came in sight of the Cathedral. Before the entrance were numerous carriages drawn up, the splendor of the equipages, and the bridal favors with which the servants and horses were decked, were evidence that the nuptial knot was being tied in the church between some of the magnates of the city; and having nothing else to engage his attention, Willis walked in to witness the ceremony.

Entering the spacious temple, he saw in front of the high altar, a large and brilliant group of elegantly attired gentlemen, and magnificently dressed ladies, in attendance on the couple whom the priest was just in the act of joining together.

From the door, the air and figures of the principal persons seemed familiar to him. Keeping in the shade of the pillars that ran along the side aisle, he approached nearer, and discovered in the bride and bridegroom, Clara and De Vere. He gave them but a glance, for just behind them, and leaning on the arm of her father, he saw Francisca.

Lovely she looked—more lovely than he had ever seen her; but the brilliancy of her glorious black eye contrasted strangely with the deathly pallor of her cheek, and her thoughts seemed far away from the scene before her; and Willis, during the ceremony, intently watching her, hoped the next time they met before the altar, it might be to claim her as his bride, and wondered if that distracted air with which Francisca regarded the passing event was at all occasioned by thoughts of him.

Clara was beautiful—proudly, haughtily beautiful; and a smile of gratified pride lighted her face as she surveyed the surrounding throng, and felt herself the most brilliant and beautiful of the group. De Vere seemed proud of his haughty beauty, and Don Manuel appeared perfectly contented, and felt assured that he was consulting his daughter’s happiness by consenting to her marriage with the Englishman.

Willis had not, however, wasted a glance on them; concealed by the column near which he was standing, he had feasted his eyes on Francisca; and when, after the benediction, the party moved away, he still continued to gaze on the spot where she had been. The noise made by their carriages, as they rolled away, aroused him, and he left the church.

Gathering up his new men at nightfall, he returned to his vessel, to which he had already sent provisions. Hard all that night did they work, getting up and remounting the guns; and the next morning, as the Maraposa went to sea, she was again the same looking craft that she was when we first saw her leaving the cove, both beautiful and dangerous, with her guns all ready for use, and a large crew to handle them; and leaving her to make her last voyage to the coast, in the capacity of a slaver, let us rejoin De Vere and his new bride.

[Conclusion in our next.