Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/534

2, 1860.] showed that the French were keeping to their usual tactics, notwithstanding their superior force.

Steadily the tub forges ahead, preserving a portentous silence. One old tar in command of a gun on the starboard quarter, who had followed Captain James from his last ship, with the licence allowed to favourites, besought piteously to be allowed to give her “just one” as they passed.

“Keep your physic for the corvette, Jack,” replied the captain.

And the corvette received a full dose; for as the tub ran across her bows at half the distance at which she had passed the commodore, she hulled her with almost every gun, receiving only the contents of her bow-chasers in reply.

“Now, master, bear up and run us alongside of the corvette in the twinkling of a bedpost.”

There was just time to reload the upper-deck guns, and to pour in one smashing broadside from both decks, when a crash aloft announced a collision between the two vessels. The helm had been put suddenly up, according to the captain’s order, and the tub ran stem on into the corvette’s quarter. The bowsprit caught her after-rigging, and in a moment the two vessels were heaving together upon the deep.

The boarders, under the first lieutenant, had been ready and waiting for some time, and the superior height of the tub enabled them to leap down with ease upon the decks of the corvette. As the two ships lay locked in a deadly embrace, Captain James would have reinforced his officer with his last man, rather than fail in his object. But there was no need. The old Scotchman, with a long two-edged Andrew Ferrara, which had done good service in many a well-fought field, led the way nobly, and more than one guard went down beneath its terrible sweep. The good cutlasses and long pikes which followed him made short work. The tide of battle never rolled backward for an instant. The quarter-deck was first taken. Then, after a desperate struggle, the Frenchmen were driven along the waists, the boarders battening down the hatches as they advanced. There was one gallant rally on the forecastle, till a last charge drove a mass of fighting men over the bows with their arms in their hands. In a quarter of an hour there was not a living Frenchman left upon the deck.

Captain James, who had coolly counted on the capture as a matter of course, had given the strictest orders that they were, if possible, to prevent the crew of the corvette from striking her flag, and this they succeeded in doing.

When at last the tub cast the corvette off, the French flag was still flying at her peak, and the commodore imagined that she had succeeded in beating off the attack.

An inquiry might naturally be made, how that respected officer had been employed during the interval. When the English ship luffed and crossed his bows without tiring, he had imagined that she wished to decline the combat. He was undeceived when she opened fire upon the corvette, but his comrade soon lay so completely between them as to cover the English ship from his fire. After he had forged some distance ahead, by the time he had again borne up, so as to lay broadside on to the Englishman, the corvette was taken, and in charge of a prize crew.

The ship of the French commodore was a fine vessel, with a well trained crew; and when attacked exactly as she expected, or allowed to fight according to her own ideas of propriety, she acquitted herself very respectably.

When, therefore, she at last succeeded in exchanging broadsides with the Englishman, passing her almost within pistol shot, her superior weight of metal told with deadly effect, and the old tub almost heeled over on her beam-ends as she received the weight of shot, though fortunately none struck her below the water line. The commodore’s ship suffered much less in proportion from the English broadside, and the crew gave a cheer as they hastened to reload.

“One more like that, and she must strike or sink,” said the commodore. But his triumph was doomed to be short-lived. He has signalled to the corvette to stand off and rake the Englishman, but she does not appear to comprehend. Perhaps, in the smoke, she has been unable to interpret his orders, For now she sails under her former comrade’s stern. But oh, horror! What is this? Crash go the cabin windows of the commodore. One, two shots strike the mizen-mast, and it goes by the board. The corvette pours in the whole of her broadside at biscuit-throwing distance, raking with every gun. Quite unsuspicious that she had passed into English hands, no effort had been made to avoid her manœuvre, and the old Scotchman had judged his distance admirably. Half a dozen guns are dismounted by her fire, and the French commodore and the next officer in command are killed by a splinter from one of them. The wreck of the mizen-mast fouls the rudder, and for a short time she becomes unmanageable. As she broaches to, the old tub takes advantage of her disaster, and crossing her stem, rakes her once more. Her decks are piled with killed and wounded. She fights gallantly for some time longer, but she can do little against the two ships, which are both beautifully handled. At last her fore-mast follows the fate of the mizen, and she is compelled to strike.

When the English captain came on board to receive the sword of the commanding officer, he found a midshipman in charge. Every superior officer was killed or placed hors de combat.

There was a great deal to be done in the way of making arrangements for the disposition of the large number of prisoners, and there was a terrible amount of work cut out for the surgeons.

At last Captain James found a few moments to exchange congratulations with his first lieutenant.

“You are not sorry we edged up to look at them?” he said. But there was still a cloud upon the careful brow of the gallant Caledonian, which success alone was unable to remove. He would have set little value upon a statue of Victory, if it was not very richly gilt.

“I canna help thinking aboot the merchantmen,” he replied. “Its just a vara great pity they should get awa’.”

For be it known to the uninitiated, that though capturing ships of war might give the greater