Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/140

4, 1860.] I tried to save the Don, but in vain.

“We will obey all your orders, Mr. Bluejacket, except in this instance. You have been well treated, but we have had monkey’s allowance, and so shall he. If this young lady will retire we will make a spread-eagle of him in a moment. Pipe all hands for punishment!” roared the brawny seaman.

All the sailors entered into the joke heartily, and the Don received as fair a six dozen as any man ever had in this world.

I was quite exhausted by the fatigue and excitement of the last two days, and took some rest, which was much disturbed by the groaning of the Don after his punishment and the carousal of the sailors down below, who made the most of the delicacies provided for the wedding breakfast.

next morning we held a council of war as to the means of taking the schooner. There were a dozen men on board her, and the small boat would not carry more than four or five of us, and we knew the rascals would sink our boat and go off with the schooner if they suspected treachery.

“The Don must hail the schooner,” remarked the boatswain, who spoke last. “I’ll manage. Look here, my dear,” he said to him, “just you put that cloak on, and walk down to the edge of the cliff, and if you don’t do what I tell you, over you go.” The unhappy man rose and obeyed. “Cry, ship ahoy! now.”

“Ship ahoy!” he cried in the most desponding voice.

“Speak up cheerfully,” said the boatswain, giving him a lively prod with a dagger in the leg, “or you’ll get another six dozen.”

“Ship ahoy!” cried the poor Don as cheerfully as if he was going to his wedding.

“Shout, ‘All hands ashore for my wedding.’

“He obeyed mechanically, and in a few minutes the pirates’ crew, dressed in their best, pulled to the landing-place with a will. Our men being well armed, the pirates were secured in an instant, and the island and the ship were ours.

“And now for Old England!” we all cried.

“But what shall we do with these fellows?” I asked.

“Why, Mr. Bluejacket,” replied the boatswain, “my impression is that we had better at the last moment let the niggers loose, and they will turn the tables on these scoundrels.”

The advice was too good not to be followed. We gutted the Don’s house of all which was valuable, and as the yacht was well victualled we had nothing to do but to go. We prepared the state-cabin for the Princess Swanka, as I still called her, and after we were all embarked, we gave the keys of the niggers’ huts to Pompey, whom we sent ashore in the dingy, and we bade farewell to Pirates’ Island.

The Don, heavily ironed, was brought away with us, and the Duchess of Bijou’s spoons were not forgotten.

Under pain of instant death, the Don furnished us with his chart, and we found, not much to our surprise, that the Admiralty charts of these seas were totally wrong. I promised the Don his life if we arrived safe in England.

“But what will you do with me?” asked the fallen hero.

“Why, I shall take you to London, and charge you with stealing the spoons,—first, on account of the dirtiness of the transaction, and secondly, as a warning to lion-hunters in Belgravia.”

“Oh, Mr. Bluejacket,” he whined, “I treated you like a gentleman!”

“Yes,” I answered. “Why? Because I was heir to a peerage.”

“But I learnt those manners in Mayfair,” he replied.

This answer somewhat staggered me.

We had a good run, and made Plymouth in twenty-eight days. I at once went ashore and reported myself to the admiral.

“Gracious me, Mr. Bluejacket, are you risen from the dead?—or rather I should address you Lord Tartar.”

“Lord what?” I asked.

“Lord Tartar, to be sure. Your uncle died at sea; and, to tell you the truth, I think he died at the right time, as that affair with the abandoned hulk would have cashiered him. He had a fever, after a paroxysm of passion, and he said that the surgeon was a fool, and the assistant-surgeon was an ass; he refused all treatment, and lay and swore at the fever till he got the worst of it. But come in to luncheon,” he added, “my wife and daughters will be delighted to see you.”

I accepted his offer, and after luncheon told my story, to their great astonishment. The young ladies were much interested about the Don, and wanted to know if he resembled Lord Byron’s Corsair, and the prettiest of them threw up her eyes and said,

“I am afraid, my dear ladies,” I remarked, “I have extinguished his only virtues, by robbing him of his intended; and as one of his crimes was stealing spoons, he was a petty larceny hero.”

The civilities and attentions of the admiral’s wife and daughters somewhat died away when they found that I had brought my fiancée with me. However, they could not resist making the acquaintance of a Princess, and Kitty Figgs made a great furore amongst the naval circles at Plymouth. She put off her female piratical dress, and appeared in a blue moire antique skirt without any crinoline or hoops, and a tight jacket with silver buttons.

Before she had worn this for a couple of days, the “La Principessa” costume was to be seen in all the windows in Plymouth, and all the ladies discarded their hoops, to a woman.

Our story now comes near its end. I married the Princess, as I still call her, at Plymouth, and a Royal salute was fired in her honour as we came out of church. I paid off the yacht and sent her to Cowes, where she now is, though an attempt was made to seize her by the builders of her, who had never been paid.