Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/331

 into the cabin, leaving our English cabin-boy to watch in the companion way. Here I imparted our danger, and asked their assistance in striking the first blow. My plan was to secure the crew, and give them battle. The mate, as I expected, shrank like a girl, declining any step till the captain returned. The cook and boatswain, however, silently approved my movement; so that we counseled our cowardly comrade to remain below, while we assumed the responsibility and risk of the enterprise.

"It may have been rather rash, but I resolved to begin the rescue, by shooting down, like a dog, and without a word, the notorious Cuban convict who had attempted the captain's life. This, I thought, would strike panic into the mutineers, and end the mutiny in the most bloodless way. Drawing a pair of large horse-pistols from beneath the captain's pillow, and examining the load, I ordered the cook and boatswain to follow me to the deck. But the craven officer would not quit his hold on my person. He besought me not to commit murder. He clung to me with the panting fear and grasp of a woman. He begged me, with every term of endearment, to desist; and, in the midst of my scuffle to throw him off, one of the pistols accidentally exploded. A moment after, my vigilant watch-boy screamed from the starboard a warning 'look-out!' and peering forward in the blinding darkness as I emerged from the lighted cabin, I beheld the stalwart form of the ringleader, brandishing a cutlass within a stride of me. I aimed and fired. We both fell: the mutineer from two balls in his abdomen, and I from the recoil of an over-charged pistol.

"My face was cut and my eye injured by the concussion; but as neither combatant was deprived of consciousness, in a moment we were both on our feet. The Spanish felon, however, pressed his hand on his bowels, and rushed forward, exclaiming he was slain; but in his descent to the forecastle he was stabbed in the shoulder with a bayonet by the boatswain, whose vigorous blow drove the weapon with such tremendous force that it could hardly be drawn from the scoundrel's carcass.

"I said I was up in a moment; and feeling my face with my hand I perceived a quantity of blood on my cheek, around which I hastily tied a handkerchief, below my eyes. I then rushed to the arm-chest. At that moment, the crack of a pistol and a sharp, boyish cry, told me that my pet was wounded beside me. I laid him behind the hatchway and returned to the charge. By this time I was blind with rage, and fought, it seems, like a madman. I confess that I have no personal recollection whatever of the following events, and only learned them from the subsequent reports of the cook and the boatswain.

"I stood, they said, over the arm-chest like one spell-bound. My eyes were fixed on the forecastle; and, as head after head loomed up out of the darkness above the hatch, I discharged carbine after carbine at the mark. Every thing that moved fell by my aim. As I fired the weapons, I flung them away to grasp fresh ones; and, when the battle was over, the cook aroused me from my mad stupor, still groping wildly for arms in the emptied chest.