Читать книгу In Search of Mademoiselle - Gibbs George - Страница 3

Like many other English ships engaged in private enterprises at this time, the Great Griffin was of no great bulk, having a tonnage of but a little more than three hundred. Nor had she the great after-castles and fore-castles of the Spanish galleons; but her bulwarks were stoutly built, and high enough to give such protection against the arrows and small pieces of the enemy as might be necessary to those who handled the tier of eighteen and twenty-pounders on the main deck. The after-castle, or poop as it had come to be called, was raised but one deck, and here again were mounted several patereros of modern fashion for use at short distances. The guns being all mounted upon the upper deck, made open ports below of no necessity; and so, even in rough weather, all of her ordnance could be brought to bear. The company was made up of merchant sailors and coasters, – taken altogether a hardy lot, yet gentle and quite unlike the reports of them which had reached our ears from the mouths of the Spaniards. The Griffin had three tall masts, and upon them were set sails patterned after the wonderful new invention of Master Fletcher of Rye. For the spars, in lieu of being made fast athwart the ship, so set to the masts as to lay forward and aft, it being thus possible by the hauling upon certain tackles to shift the sails from the one side to the other with great speed and small exertion. This invention permitted the ship to perform the strange feat of sailing almost directly into the wind, and allowed great advantages in getting to windward of larger ships. Though I had seen ships of this fashion in the Channel, never before had I sailed in one of them; so the easy manner of working and the simpleness of the rigging and tackling gave me a great pleasure.

Standing on the after deck and looking forward one could note the strong lines of the barque. For, unburdened by the tophamper of the galleons, the bulwarks, barring the break at the fore-castle, took a graceful curve and met above the bed of the bowsprit, which made into the head where it was solidly bolted to the deck below. At the forward part of the fore-castle was mounted a great head of a dragon, with yawning mouth and wide eyes that looked over the waters ahead as though in search of its rightful quarry.

As I looked aloft and saw the new sails yellow and purple in the morning sun, big-bellied under the stress of a fine breeze from the east, the stays to windward taut as iron bars, the fellow at the helm leaning well to the slant of the deck, methought I had never seen so splendid a sight, and thankful was to I be alive and able to enjoy the beauty of it. The freshening breeze piled up the waters, and the green of the curl topped by its filmy cloud lifted itself to be caught in a trice and carried down the wind against the broad bows of the ship, or indeed at times, over the bulwarks, singing as it flew a mellow song more pleasing to my ears than any other earthly melody.

Master Hooper, by reason of his previous service, maintained to a high degree the discipline of the old navy; and the company of the Great Griffin was thus unlike those of many of the free sailers of the time, which for the most part were composed of men who had used the sea in various ways but had no knowledge of the customs aboard regular ships of war. To gain that knowledge the men of the Griffin were each day exercised at the guns and were practised in the use of the sword and pike, while the bowmen and arquebusiers had targets set upon the fore-castle which they shot at from the poop with great speed and nice judgment. The pikemen and swordsmen had a proficiency I never saw equaled in France or in Spain; and Master Hooper – they called him “Davy Devil” – had an exercise which he called the fire practise, which more than aught else showed his ingenuity in providing against panic or mishap. Two years before, a large part of the company had rebelled against the second in command, who had caused one of their number to be strung up at the mast by the thumbs. Captain Hooper being ashore at the time, matters might have gone badly with the officer, had not a messenger been immediately despatched to the inn where he was stopping. Then came Master Hooper in great haste and caused the alarum of fire to be sounded. So nice had been his discipline that each man went to his appointed place, waiting there until Master Hooper appeared upon the poop and gave them a round speech upon the quality of obedience as practised in the navy of Henry the Great; to the end that, there being no fire to quench, they quenched themselves and went about their several duties.

On the morning of the second day from Plymouth we sighted a sail to the south, and discovered her to be a crumster of New Castle, bearing French Protestants from Havre to Bordeaux. The Captain, Master Tremayne, related a sad tale of the manner in which several persons who should have gone with him were taken by the officers of the Inquisition at Havre, as they were about to make their escape to his vessel.

The martial spirit of Master Hooper had done much to shake the serenity of the merchant life out of me, and the sight of several gentlewomen below decks aboard the crumster, with the pink rings of the manacles and the red scars of the fire still upon them, so inflamed me that I vowed no feeling of charity should stand between me and the duties of justice. Captain Tremayne also told us that during the night he had run afoul of a Spanish vessel of large size, who had hailed him and was in the act of sending boats aboard when a fog fell and he had pulled away under its friendly cover. After some further parley Captain Hooper set sail on the Griffin and steered boldly to the south, hoping thus to sight this Spanish sail during the afternoon; and true enough, in the first watch a large ship was made out under topsails and spritsail, standing for the coast of France. Upon sighting us the stranger hove about and took a course which the Great Griffin must cross in an hour or so.

Master Hooper, not knowing the strength of the ship and wishing to draw her further from the coast where Spanish cruisers in great numbers lay in wait for Huguenot vessels, put up his helm and stood off. The wind however blowing smartly, he soon found the Griffin to be drawing away from the stranger, who was laboring heavily in the great seas. In order therefore to slacken our pace without attracting notice, Master Hooper caused one of the spare mainsails to be lowered over the stern. So soon as this sail touched the water the speed of the Griffin caused it to fill and act as a drag which notably diminished our rate.

The Spaniard, for such the vessel now appeared, began drawing up, until in the course of an hour or so we could mark his tiers of guns as they frowned out over the water to windward. So light was our top hamper and so steady was the drag astern that we appeared to toss but little in the seas. But the Spaniard yawed and rolled in so frightful a manner that the sails at times seemed hardly to be restrained by their sheets, and flapped so noisily that they boomed like long cannon. She went over at so great an angle that her decks and castles crowded with the men at the guns were plainly to be seen.

Yet she presented a fair sight as she came down upon us. Despite the squall, the sun stole between the rifts of the clouds and here and there turned the tumbling purple mass into molten gold. The sails, catching the glint, were bright against the darkening horizon, and made so fair a vision that she seemed the abode of some water-princess rather than the battery of a horde of barbarians seeking life and unworthy profit.

When she came to what may have seemed a reasonable distance, a cloud of smoke puffed from a point forward and a column of spray shot up from the water at several hundred yards on our quarter. The Spanish colors were then run up quickly, and this movement was followed by Master Hooper, who sent to the mainmast head the pennant of the Queen.

Little by little the course of the Griffin had been laid to the windward, so the Spaniard now sailed at a distance of about half a mile; and as other shots now began falling somewhat nearer to us, the captain ordered the tackle which secured the drag-sail to be cast off, and they hauled it aboard. The Griffin, eased of her load, sprang forward like a scurrying cloud, the fellow at the helm moving her closer and closer into the eye of the wind till the starboard leeches were all a-tremble; then he held her as she was, enabling the Spaniard to come within gunshot.

The balls now fell too close for ease of mind, and the splinters from two of them, which struck us fair amidships, made an end to three gunners who were at their stations. In a great ferment I saw them carried below to the steerage, crying aloud in pitiful fashion. Captain Hooper hereupon let his ship go off a little to get her headway; the gunners cast loose the long eighteen-pounders, and the after guns were soon doing some execution in the enemy’s rigging, and our shots still told after the Spaniard’s shots began falling astern, or were so badly aimed that they flew wild and did us no hurt. Seeing that the range of the Spanish ordnance was shorter than our own and marking our great advantage in this matter, Captain Hooper put the ship upon the other tack and hove her to with the wind to the larboard, thus enabling the entire starboard broadside to be got into action. The roll of the Griffin greatly disturbed the gunners, but after some minutes, by firing high upon the roll to leeward, many shots flew straight for the Spaniard, so that soon we saw first his bowsprit and sail, and then his foremast go by the board.

There was a great commotion behind me, and I turned to see a fellow jumping up and down and slapping his thigh in great glee. “How now, sir,” I said, somewhat sternly, “are you mad?”

He turned to me with a grin.

“’Twill be poor smellin’ in the Bay o’ Bisky, say I. Did ye see me snip off his nose? Did ye? ’Twas my shot, sir. He’ll want a bigger ’kerchief than a spritsail now, I’ll be bound.”

The wreck so encumbered the deck of the Spaniard that it was some minutes before any order could be brought about and the galleon again put to the wind. Master Hooper clewed up his lower sails, eased off his sheets, and taking up a position on the enemy’s weather-quarter poured in at easy range a fire which swept the crowded decks and created a panic among the Spanish gunners. The cries of the wounded and dying we could hear faintly, but by the movements of the officers on the after-castle, who ran here and there brandishing their swords, we were able to surmise a sad lack of discipline among the company. On the Griffin the divisions waited for the word of command from the officers, firing thereupon with great regularity and precision. Though now, as we came again into range, the Spanish shots told here and there, and great white splinters flew in all directions, such men as were unhurt remained at their stations, the injured among them being replaced by others from those detailed to navigate the ship.

So unwieldy was our adversary that she could not come up into the wind because of the great encumbrance of her head gear, and so was forced to wear around; and as she did so, Davy Devil who had been awaiting this opportunity to rake, fired the entire larboard broadside. The Griffin, no longer lying in the trough of the sea, sailed more steadily than before, and the effect of this broadside was terrific. Not less than four shots went through the ports of the Spaniard’s after-castle and one, more lucky than the others, passed just over the rail and struck the mainmast below the yard, and over it went on the next roll to leeward, the tackling dragging with it the mizzen-topmast which flew asunder at the cap with a crackling heard loudly above the booming of the ordnance.

“She’ll need a new bonnet, Master Killigrew, to be in the fashion again,” said Davy Devil behind me.

We could not at this time have been at a greater distance than two cable-lengths and Master Hooper, believing the enemy about to strike his colors, brought his sails home and directed the helmsman to haul up alongside. No sign being heard or seen, two anchors were got out and men lay aloft on the yards ready to cast them upon the Spaniard’s decks. Three, – four minutes, Master Hooper waited, withholding his shot. Then, the Spanish demi-culverins again opening fire upon us to our great disadvantage, the word was given to discharge another broadside, the gunners then to crouch behind the bulwarks and cubbridges and prepare to board.

No ship could have withstood the shock of this fire! For discharged at such close range the shots tore through the bulwarks and planking with a horrid sound, the splinters, as we found, killing and maiming many who had gone below for protection.

At this moment a single tall figure appeared upon the after-castle making a signal of submission. Upon which Master Hooper sheered off and hove the Griffin into the wind that he might mind his damages and care for his wounded.

The weather having moderated, a boat was called away to go aboard the prize, and Master Hooper giving me charge, I put off for the Spaniard. On account of the heavy sea still running the boarding of the vessel was no easy task. In spite of the dismantled rigging which lay over her sides, she wallowed far down in the trough like a shift-ballast, the seas dashing against her and lashing the foam over her waist in feathery clouds. At length, with some difficulty, the coxswain hooked a ring-bolt in her side to leeward and I hauled myself over the bulwarks.

On deck a gruesome sight awaited us. The wreckage of the foremast and the yards lay where they had fallen and obscured the view of the fore-castle where a party of the company were hacking away at the wreck with their axes and swords. The ship was flush-decked in the waist, after the fashion of vessels in the carrying trade, and the men who worked the guns had thus been exposed to the worst of our fire which had raked them en echelon– as the French have it – from foremast to poop. Many of the cannon, small culverins and swivels of Italian make, were dismounted and lay askew, frowning inboard. Piled here and there were bodies, many lacking in human semblance and presenting a ghastly spectacle after the cleanly decks of the Great Griffin.

Moving carefully over the slippery decks, I came at last to the poop, below which stood one who, by reason of his immense stature, towered head and shoulders above those around him. I am not like to forget this early impression made upon my mind by Diego de Baçan; for, surrounded as he was by a scene of blood, there seemed some demoniac sympathy between his figure and the carnage about him. There was that in the contour of his face which reminded me of the doughty Ojeda, possessing a hideous beauty like only to that of the evil one. The sun behind him glinted on the visor of his morion from the shadow of which his eyes gleamed darkly. His black beard, which came at two points, framed in a jaw set squarely enough on his great neck, and his wide shoulders even over-topped mine both for breadth and height. He leaned easily with one hand upon the rail, looking, in his polished breast piece, so splendid that I could not but mark the difference between his garb and mine, which was but that of the merchant seaman, ungarnished by any trappings of war.

Scorning the salute I proffered him, he spoke coldly, in English, without further ado.

“You would speak with me, señor?”

“My mission,” I replied, “is with the commander of this ship. If you are he, you will go with me yonder.”

“The commander of the San Cristobal is dead. I am Don Diego de Baçan. But I will go aboard no heretic pirato.”

“We are no pirato, señor,” said I calmly, “but a free sailer of Her Majesty, Elizabeth of England, whom you have attacked without warrant.”

“And if I will not go?” Here he drew himself up to his great height, folded his arms and frowned at me defiantly, while a dozen or so of his pikemen stood at his back and scowled fiercely. But, in my position, black looks caused no tremors.

“If you will not come,” I answered steadily, “my orders are to bring you, – this I will do; failing to return before the next stroke of the bell, my captain will sink you as he would a rotten pinnace.”

He looked about him at the scene of havoc, and smiled bitterly. Then, with a word to his pikemen, who still surrounded us, his manner changed.

“Señor,” he said more quietly, “you see how it is with us. The Cristobal takes water at every surge. She is a wreck. What am I to do? To continue the battle were only to sacrifice the remainder of my company. I must surrender.” He cast down his eyes. “Yes, there is no help for it. I will go with you. But if, señor,” and here he raised his head and eyed me like a hawk from cap to boot, “if you deem your victory one of personal prowess and have the humor for further argument, I shall meet your pleasure.” His words came calmly, yet he leaned forward and seemed about to raise his hands toward me. I folded my arms and looked him in the eyes. They had lost their quiet and flashed at me furiously. His great fingers twitched nervously as though to catch me at the throat. He was glorious. And then I made a vow that, so far as it lay in my power when time and place fitted, his taunt should have an issue.

“Why, that will be as it may be,” I replied evenly, “at present you are to follow me aboard my ship.” Seeing my attitude, he grew calmer and shrugging his shoulders, turned away.

“As you will;” and then after a pause, half courteously, “You will permit me to give some final orders?”

“Orders in future must come from my captain.”

“But, señor,” he cried, “these are but some matters relating to the repair of the ship.”

Seeing no harm in this, I allowed him to turn and speak in a low tone to one of his pikemen, whereupon the fellow went below.

The Griffin had meanwhile hauled up within speaking distance and, mounting the after-castle, I hailed Captain Hooper, acquainting him with the condition of affairs aboard the Cristobal. The weather being still too rough to heave the Griffin alongside, I obtained further instructions to bring the Spanish officer aboard that the disposition of the prisoners and other matters might be more readily discussed and considered.

So ill-governed was the crew that as we got down into the boat the pikemen and gunners leaned far over the bulwarks, cursing us for dogs of heretics, and one of them spat in the face of a sailor named Salvation Smith, who would have killed him with a boatpike had not the coxswain, Job Goddard, stayed his hand. The wind now blew less vigorously and, though the sea still ran high, there seemed less danger than on the outward passage. But, as we rounded out from under the lee of the Spaniard, my fine fellows setting their broad backs to the stroke, there came from one of the gallery ports a cry of distress, the voice of a woman,

“A moi! a moi! For God’s sake, help!”

The oars hung for a moment in the air as though the sound of those English words had stricken the boatmen motionless. Then as I half rose from the thwart, with one accord the starboard oars gave a mighty stroke and the bow of the boat swung over under the many-galleried stern of the Cristobal. A glance at the port showed a face and the flutter of a kerchief, while from within came the clashing of metal and the curses of men. As we swung in, a piece of wreckage and tackling hung near us and when our stern rose on the crest of the wave, I could reach it, and hauled myself clear of the boat and up to the projection of the lowermost gallery. As I raised myself I saw two boats drop from the side of the Griffin and knew I should not long be without aid. On reaching the port the sound of the conflict became more distinct and I heard the hard breathing of the disputants; so without more ado, I raised myself over the sill with an effort and clambered in.

Before the door leading to the passage of the half-deck a tall, slim figure in sombre garb moved from side to side, making so excellent a play with his sword, that the pikemen who were thrusting at him furiously from the narrow corridor had small advantage. A woman lay upon the floor and another crouched in the corner. On seeing me come forward one of the pikemen fell back, but the other aimed so vicious a blow at the swordsman that, had he not been thrown aside, it must surely have ended him. The force of the thrust threw the villain forward into the cabin, where, being off his guard by reason of his pike handle fouling the doorjamb, he came within reach of my hand, which struck him full in the mouth, laying him sprawling over a sea chest. Salvation Smith, singing a psalm, and Job Goddard, swearing loudly, here tumbled in at the port and following into the passage laid about them lustily with their weapons, to the end that in a few seconds the place was cleared and the outer door made fast. To our great amazement no further attempt was made upon the door, nor indeed was there any commotion above us or on the deck; but upon returning to the port the reason of this was clear, for the four boats of the Griffin were sweeping around the stern, the fellows lying to their oars with vigor and the pikemen standing upright, their jaws set and the glitter of battle in their eyes. Over the Cristobal they came swarming, driving the men forward where they huddled upon the fore-castle like a slave cargo. They had no spirit, for not a shot or an arrow was fired, and Master Hooper found himself in undisputed possession of the prize.

Having now no further alarm for the outcome of the affair, I directed the door to be unfastened and turned my attention to those within the cabin.

I have never made boast of courtly ways, thinking them mere glitterings and fripperies of the idle, designed to hide a lack of sturdier qualities. Few women had I known, and in my boisterous life no need had come for handsome phrases, yet would I have given whatever interest I possessed or might come to possess in this or other prizes, for the readiness of wit to clothe my rough speech in more courtly apparel. There was a quality of nobility and grace in the figure of the maid in the cabin that cast my rugged notions to the winds and made me seem the swash-buckler that I was. In stature she was tall and carried herself with the pride and dignity that are ever the birthright of true nobility. No exact description can I put down of the appearance and demeanor of Mademoiselle Diane de la Notte; for not poetry but only dull prose can run from my unmannerly quill. I only know that a radiance was shed upon me, and all the senses save that one which controlled my heart were blinded and inert. So acute indeed was this feeling of my moral littleness that I did naught but stand shifting from one foot to the other, toying in silly fashion with the hilt of my sword. Had it not been for the maid herself I know not what uncomely thing I might have done. But Madame, who had lain swooning on the floor, now recovering consciousness and thus removing her anxiety Mademoiselle raised her head and spoke to me.

“Monsieur, we do not know what is your calling or command – whether adventurer or Queen’s officer – but you are a valiant man,” saying other things I so little deserved that I cast down my eyes and replied in some embarrassment that my men, not I, deserved her kindness – God knows what we had done was little enough and easy of accomplishment.

But she would not have it so, adding further, “The La Nottes are not ungrateful and their blessings will fall forever on you, sir. It may happen that your service may one day have its reward. But now,” – and a deep sigh burst from her, “alas! we can do nothing, not even for ourselves – nothing!” It seemed as though her voice were about to break, but bending quickly forward she applied herself anew to Madame lying at her knee, the picture of feminine strength even in despair. I was so affected by her anguish that I could find no words to say to her, and while I still wondered who could seek to do them injury, I moved to the Sieur de la Notte, who sat upon a chest staunching the blood which flowed freely from a pike wound in his wrist. He was much exhausted by his encounter, so I aided him to bind his arm, after which I withdrew and went upon the deck to make my report to Master Hooper.