Chapter XIII: Conclusion: We have not much more to relate (2)

The miraculous restoration of his brother--for such it was deemed--alone was a palliation to the heart of Cavalier for the deep mortification of his defeat; and yet it had come about simply enough. Recent rains had formed a deep basin of water under the cliff from which he fell, in a place where jagged rocks alone had been visible shortly before. Sinking, he rose to the surface, struggled to the bank, faint and wounded, and had found shelter, till well and whole, in a shepherd's hut, till he could join his brother in the Valley of the Noyes, and now tender indeed was their meeting and the mutual embrace they gave each other.

But brief time had they for mutual explanations, as ere long the report of musketry began to wake the echoes of the forest, and Daniel Gui came rushing in with tidings that the Sieur de Lalande was putting to the sword the entire inhabitants of the village of Euzet. Entering it suddenly, he had found a bullock newly-skinned, and bales of hams, bread, and sausages made up for the men of Cavalier, whom he at once traced and attacked with vigour, and defeated with the loss of 170 men. Final vengeance now fell on the unhappy villagers of Euzet, which, together with a cavern close by, was found to be full of the wounded, ammunition, medicine, and stores of Cavalier's forces. This sealed the fate of the former; and every human being lying there was slaughtered, including the helpless creatures in the cavern. Such was the awful system on which this war was carried on.

Cavalier's commissariat was supplied by requisitions upon districts, irrespective of their faith, and when not given with goodwill, he was compelled to write thus to the chief magistrate of the place:

'MM.,--Vous ne manquerez point de nous préparer demain le diner, son peine d'être assiégé et mis _à feu et à sang_!--CAVALIER.'

But it was while he was still struggling manfully and bravely to maintain a desperate cause against the whole force of the French army that the crushing intelligence came to him of the fall of his compatriot, Roland Laporte. This was on the 13th of August, 1704, at Castelnau, near the Ners, a river which in winter rolls down from the mountains in a mighty flood.

His presence there would seem to have been betrayed to the Duc de Villars. At midnight, when he and his companions were fast asleep, the sentinel on the tower-head suddenly heard amid the stillness of the hour the distant noise of horses approaching at a furious gallop, and gave the alarm just as a column of cavalry was entering the town.

Half-clad and half-armed, the Camisards rushed to the stables, and mounting their horses bare-backed, rode off without saddles, bits, or spurs; thus they were soon after taken in a deep hollow way, and compelled to halt and dismount. Planting his back against an aged olive tree, Roland made a desperate resistance, to every summons of 'Rendez vous! bas les armes coquin!' replying by a blow of his sword, or shots from his pistols, a row of which he carried in his girdle. He slew several dragoons, ere one by a musket-shot brought him down, by a mortal wound, on which his comrades threw themselves above his body, and were seized and bound.

On the 16th of August his body was dragged at the tail of a cart into Nismes and burnt, while five of his companions were broken alive on the wheel around his funeral pyre. Many Camisards perished thus here, the most memorable executions being those of Catenat and Ravenel, who were burned alive, almost within sight of the battle-field on which they had defeated the Comte de Broglie.

Jean Cavalier found himself almost alone now, yet his spirit did not quail.

Marshal Villars had now come to the conclusion that the warfare seemed likely to become interminable; that it was possible to harass the hardy mountaineers of the Cevennes, but not to conquer them. So resolute was the spirit of the Camisards, so impregnable their hilly fortresses, that all hope of ending the war so long as one was left alive, was relinquished by this able officer; and we are told that in the heart of Cavalier, who beheld the sufferings of the peasantry from incessant toil and famine, there rose a great longing for peace, if it were possible with safety and honour; and on ascertaining that 10,000 of the Huguenots were ready to lay down their arms and submit to the king, he consented to hold an amicable parley with any officer the latter might send.

Cavalier's first interview was with Lalande, who was sent by Marshal Villars. 'Lalande surveyed the worn garments and pale cheeks of the young hero, whose deeds had reached the ears and troubled the mind of Louis XIV., in the midst of his mighty foreign wars; he looked upon the bodyguard of the rebel chief, and saw there, too, signs of poverty and extreme physical suffering, and believed that he knew how to treat with men in such a condition.'

He proffered a large sum in gold, not a coin of which Cavalier would touch, though he allowed his followers to accept it for their starving wives and children; and he made preliminary arrangements with Lalande for a final interview with the Marechal Duc de Villars.

It was in the summer of 1704 that the latter, the renowned antagonist of Marlborough, entered the garden of the Recollets, at St. Cesaire, near Nismes, the site of which is now occupied by a theatre, to discuss peace and war with 'the Boy-General,' Jean Cavalier, who, resolved to produce all the effect he could, appeared on this occasion magnificently mounted, with a richly-laced coat, and a hat plumed with white feathers. Cavalier's young face looked sad, we are told, and the tone of his voice was melancholy, 'and Villars looked on him with a deep admiration and sympathy.'

On this occasion Cavalier's bodyguard was a mounted force of Camisards in white tunics.

The result of this memorable conference was, that the insurgents laid down their arms on the assurances of justice and tolerance in religion to the persecuted Protestants of the Cevennes, and flattering promises of reward and rank in the army of France to Jean Cavalier; but neither one nor the other was destined to be kept or fulfilled, and the Place de Boucarini, at Nismes, was soon deluged with the blood of all who fell into the hands of the Government. The Camisards now repudiated the treaty made by Cavalier, and, finding himself reviled by many of these on the one hand, and neglected by the Court on the other he became an exile, and entered the army of Queen Anne at the head of a regiment entirely formed of Huguenots.

As a colonel, in his twentieth year, he fought in the British Army in Spain at the Battle of Almanza, under the Earl of Peterborough, and there, in the defeat, his battalion of Camisards was almost cut to pieces by the victorious French, and there young Guillot, its major, died sword in hand.

Of the after life of Cavalier we can trace little. It is only known that by the British Government he was made Governor of the Isle of Jersey, and died at Chelsea in the May of 1740.

It has been more than once asserted that he died _in_ the Hospital a pensioner, which is a mistake the records there distinctly prove.

In the year before his death, on the 2nd of July, he and his countryman, Colonel Balthazar Rivas de Foisac, were appointed Major-Generals in the British Army.

THE

BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ.

THE BUGLE-BOY OF BADAJOZ.

'Mother! mother! come out of the cold ground; come to your little José, who is so lonely now!' wailed a boy stretched on his mother's grave, while wetting with his tears the flowers that had been laid there, and the green turf, into which he dug his little hands in the wildness of his great grief.

It was in the cemetery of the Penha Convent at Cintra, and when ravaged Portugal lay wasted and bleeding under the feet of the French army, led by Marshal Junot, the Duc d'Abrantes, to Lisbon, in 1808, a period that seems long ago now, yet was fresh enough in the memory of our fathers.

It was on a glorious evening in autumn, and the hill of Cintra, the base of which is clothed with wood, but which terminates in loose crags and splintered pinnacles, was bathed in warm light, while every fissure was covered with amaryllis and aglow with crimson geranium, and giant evergreen oaks and cork-trees were intertwined with vines, all adding to the beauty of the scene.

On one hand towered up the hill with the Penha Convent, on the other were the ruins of a Moorish castle; but the sunshine and the scenery were lost on the orphan boy. He saw only his mother's grave, and all the rest of the world seemed dark to him indeed.

'Look up, my boy,' said a voice, as a hand was kindly laid on his neck, and, rising from the turf, he found himself face to face with an officer of Cazadores, or Portuguese Light Infantry. He was a handsome and pleasant-looking man, clad in green uniform faced with scarlet, and wearing silver epaulettes. 'Who lies here that you weep for?' he asked.

'My mother,' replied the boy, in a tone of infinite tenderness.

'And your father?'

'Was De Castro, the guerilla chief, whom the French shot at the gate of the Torre Vilha. You have heard, perhaps?'

'Yes; he was taken prisoner in Lisbon; a brave fellow--I knew him well,' replied the officer, with kindling eyes and lowering brow.

'My mother never held up her head afterwards--and--and three days ago she left me--and--and they brought her here,' said the boy, with a fresh fit of heavy weeping, as he pressed his knuckles into his inflamed eyes.

In tatters, and dusky in complexion, yet rich in colour, like the beggar-boys of Murillo's famous picture in the Dulwich Gallery, he was a handsome little fellow, with a clear olive skin, sparkling eyes of the deepest hazel, and thick, wavy black hair.

'Have you no brother or sister?' asked the officer, patting his uncovered head, for poor José was without hat or cap.

'None now. I had a sister once.'

'And she?'

'Was carried off by the French voltigeurs, and was never seen again. Poor Theresa!' said the boy, in a gasping voice.

'And have you no home, my little fellow?'

'None, but the church porch.'

'Then come with me, and I will find you another.'

'Where, senhor?'

'Under the colours of His Majesty Pedro the Third.'

The boy's face lighted up. It was too soon for him to despair yet; he had youth and hope, 'youth, with which the linen folds seem robes of purple, the chaplet of cowslips becomes a monarch's crown, and the wooden bench is as an ivory throne of empire.'

So little José Francisco de Castro, for such was his name, gave his hand in confidence to Captain Dom Pedro de Lobiera, and became a bugle-boy in the Seventh Regiment of Cazadores, among the Portuguese troops under the gallant Marshal Beresford, and destined to co-operate more immediately with that division of the British army which, led by Lieutenant-General Sir John Hope, took possession of Lisbon in 1808.

A curious combination of wrath and exultation made José's heart beat tumultuously on the day he first assumed his uniform, and he slung with a green cord over his shoulder the bugle with which he was to summon his comrades.

He had an admirable ear for music, and soon mastered all the many bugle-calls requisite for the man[oe]uvres of light troops in the field, and by his coolness and bravery, while yet in his teens, became a prime favourite with his captain, with his colonel, the Viscount de Sa (whose 'orderly bugler' he became), and with the whole of the Seventh Cazadores he became a species of regimental pet.

When the battle of Salamanca was won by Wellington in the glorious summer of 1812, when we attacked the Duc de Ragusa, and when Park's Portuguese column was foiled in the first attempt to storm the Arapiles, two steep, rugged, and solitary hills that overlook the plain, it was José's bugle sounding the 'rally' amid the hottest of the fire that caused the southern hill to be re-won; and when Marshal Beresford was unhorsed and wounded in the leg, while charging at the head of the 11th Light Dragoons, and again while leading a Portuguese brigade, it was 'José de Castro, a bugle-boy of the Seventh Cazadores,' that helped him to remount, as the _Portuguiz Telegrafo_ of that week records.

On the plains of Talavera de la Reyna, at the heights of Busaco, and by the green hill of Albuera, when the Anglo-Portuguese army fought Soult--that memorable hill, by whose slope, at the close of the terrible day, the men of our old 'Die Hards' of the 57th were seen lying in two distinct ranks, dead but victorious--the Seventh Cazadores, when wavering under the dreadful fire of the French infantry, and menaced by the heavy cavalry of Latour-Maubourg, were rallied in square by the bugle of José de Castro.

He was 'ever foremost in the path of danger,' says the _Jornal de Commercio_ of Lisbon; 'and the notes of his bugle were heard in many of the desperate onsets and bayonet charges of those well-fought fields. In all these actions he did his duty; but his name ought ever to be remembered for a deed of valour, for which, at the time, he gained well-merited applause, and which was long afterwards passed from mouth to mouth whenever the terrible siege of Badajoz was mentioned.'

It is to the third siege of the city that the paper refers.

'Give me your hand, José,' said the Viscount de Sa on one occasion. 'What a boy you are! You beat the trumpeter who blew two trumpets at once at the siege of Argos.'

As yet he seemed to have a charmed life; no ball had ever touched him. He was a good, devout, and very grave boy, for, as Captain de Lobiera said, he believed 'that the spirit of his dead mother accompanied him wherever he went.'

It was on the 6th of March, 1812, that the army of Wellington broke up from its cantonments, and, ten days after, crossed the Guadiana, and three divisions, under Beresford and Picton, at once invested Badajoz, then garrisoned by five thousand men under Generals Phillipon and Vaillant, whose tenacious resistance caused some uneasiness to the British leader, as a defeat under its walls might have seriously disarranged all his plans for the future.

Before the Seventh Cazadores entered the trenches they had halted a few miles from Badajoz, after a long and harassing day's march. The rain fell in torrents that night. Amid the misty gloom, in the distance, the guns of the beleaguered city were seen to flash redly out upon the night, and weird was the glare of the port fires as they sputtered on the gusty wind.

All that comfortless night, José, like the rest of his comrades, spent the weary hours in the open air. He placed his canteen on the ground, put his knapsack above it, and, thus improvising a seat, strove to sleep, with his greatcoat and blanket spread over his shoulders for warmth. And when the chill gray dawn came, he was so stiff that, at first, he could scarcely place the cold mouth of the bugle to his lips.

'Now, my men--la générale!' cried the Viscount de Sa, as he leaped on his horse, and the buglers, at the head of whom stood little José de Castro, poured clearly and melodiously on the morning wind, 'the générale,' that old warning for the march--a warning long since disused in the British service, where it was well known once.

Then the Cazadores took the road for Badajoz, and that night were there in the trenches.

It is recorded of José that before the Cazadores marched that morning he and a comrade bugler, Diaz of Belem, gave up the little pay they possessed to repair the loss of a poor woman whose hen-roost had been pillaged of its inmates in the night.

The early weeks of 1812 were cold and rainy at Badajoz, and the howling tempests of wind often concealed at night the noise of the shovels and pickaxes, as the troops broke ground, within a hundred and sixty yards of Fort Picurina, and pushed forward the trenches, till they achieved an opening four thousand feet long--a work of five days' duration, under a dreadful shower of shot and shell.

Our artillery had succeeded in making a practicable breach, by which the columns of assault might enter whenever the order to advance was given; but the position of the enemy was strong by nature, and made more so by art. Enormous beams of timber, loaded shell, huge stones, hand grenades, cold shot, all to be launched from the hand, with relays of ready-loaded muskets, were there, for those who were to keep the breaches; in these, too, were hundreds of live bombs and sunken powder-barrels, ready to blow an assaulting force to pieces; and it became evident that the chances of that force proving successful were small, unless some of the unforeseen accidents of war turned the tide in their favour.

This point, say the Portuguese, it was the good fortune of José de Castro to achieve. For the actual truth of the episode which won him the name of 'The Bugle Boy of Badajoz,' we do not vouch. There is not a word of it in Napier, or in the despatches of the Duke of Wellington; but yet it was universally believed in the army of Marshal Beresford.

It is related in history that when the final, and, to so many, fatal, night of the 6th of April came--that awful night of horror and of triumph when Badajoz was won--when more than two thousand of our officers and men perished in the breaches alone, and when the heart of the 'Iron Duke' gave way to a passionate burst of grief for the slaughter of his gallant soldiers--on that night, we say, the 'unforeseen accident,' recorded by history, was a feint attack unexpectedly becoming a real one; but the Portuguese have it that José de Castro, being of an inquiring turn of mind, and having, during his service, had many opportunities of hearing the French bugle-calls, had learned them all to perfection, and now resolved to turn his knowledge thereof to good account.

After a lighted carcase, composed of the direst combustibles, and of giant size, had been flung blazing from the walls by the French, compelling the assault to be anticipated by half-an-hour, when the stormers neared the great breach, José and his comrade, Diaz of Belem, advanced with the rest of the Cazadores.

When Diaz was in the act of taking some brandy from his canteen, a sixteen-pound shot took off his head. Yet, bugle in hand, José kept on, resolved to put in practice the scheme he had formed, and with which he had acquainted his colonel, the Viscount de Sa, and his captain, De Lobiera.

As leaves are swept before a tempest, the stormers came sweeping up the rough _débris_ of the breach covered with dead and wounded men, encumbered by these at every step, shells bursting, shot and grenades falling among them. Their shouts were terrible; the yells of the French more terrible still! Up, up they went, till they found the perilous gap was crossed by a glittering, dreadful, and impassable _chevaux-de-frise_, composed of sword-blades, keenly edged and sharply pointed, fixed in ponderous beams, chained together, and strongly wedged in the shot-riven ruins. Beyond it were masses of the French pouring in their deadly fire, sweeping the gap with sheets of lead as the wind sweeps a tunnel.

Under the _chevaux-de-frise_ the gallant José contrived to creep unseen, and, getting beyond it, to conceal himself among a heap of dead. On again crept, his dark blue uniform, splashed with blood clay, enabling him to pass unnoticed among the French, till he reached an angle of the ramparts.

Then he put his bugle to his lips and blew loudly and clearly, again and again, above the awful din of the assault, the French _recall_!

On this the French gave way, fell back, and eventually fled across the river into Fort San Christoval, where, next day, they surrendered as prisoners of war to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the future Lord Raglan of Crimean fame.

The action of José de Castro, say the Portuguese, was noised about, after the surrender of Badajoz, until it reached the ears of the Commander-in-Chief--the great Duke--who sent for him, and presented him with a sum equal to a hundred guineas English, which, in consequence of his youth, Captain Pedro de Lobiera was to pay him in small instalments. It is also said that the Duke gave the money from his own private purse. José also received a good service medal, and the Portuguese decoration No. 3.

He was now only eighteen, and the honours he received might have turned an older head; but he continued to be as grave, modest, and well-dispositioned as, when a boy, Captain de Lobiera found him beside his mother's grave in the cemetery of the Penha Convent at Cintra; and while many were promoted to commissions, he followed the fortunes of the Peninsular army with his bugle slung at his back.

That bugle was heard on the plains of Vittoria, and among the passes of the Pyrenees, where De Castro was wounded and conveyed to the town of Elizondo. There, while stretched on a pallet of straw, in the vestibule of a convent, which had been turned into a military hospital, he was attended and nursed by a lay sister, who turned out to be his sister Theresa, who had been carried off by the French, but had achieved her escape after their defeat and total rout at Vittoria.

It would be difficult to describe the mingled joy and grief of such a meeting; but both were of brief duration. As soon as José was reported fit for duty, he rejoined the Seventh Cazadores, with whom he served at Nivelle, Orthes, and Bordeaux.

His bugle was heard for the last time in battle near the hill of Toulouse, when he sounded the charge by the order of the Viscount de Sa. In that advance the latter fell wounded from his horse, and, seeing that Captain de Lobiera, the next senior officer, was defenceless, his sword-blade having been broken off near the hilt by a ball, he gave him his own, saying:

'Lead on, De Lobiera! forward, the Cazadores! I can do no more to-day.'

And once again the bugle of José sounded the command to charge.

When the army was disbanded at the peace, José endeavoured to support himself by teaching music, but in a way so humble that he led a life of privation and penury, and sought, in vain, a pension from the Portuguese Government.

It was at the little town of Golega, on the Tagus, in Portuguese Estramadura, that we last heard of 'the Bugler of Badajoz.' This was more than twenty years ago, and he was earning a precarious livelihood by teaching the cornet.

He was then an old man, bent with years and infirmity, and had for the last time renewed his prayer for a pension to the Portuguese Government. 'Let us charitably hope it will be granted,' said a writer in the Lisbon _Jornal de Commercio_ of that year, 'for there is now in the Ministry a soldier who has not forgotten the part he bore himself in the bloody episodes of the Peninsular War, one who has left an arm on a gory battlefield, and whose hearing has been destroyed by the thunder of artillery--the noble and valiant Viscount de Sa (the son of his old colonel). This gallant soldier will yet have ears for the petition of the poor _trombadero_, and be able to award him the meed he merits.'

THE

VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD'.

THE VOYAGE OF THE 'BON ACCORD.'

My name is Bob Slingsby, and in the autumn of last year I was senior apprentice, or midshipman (for we wore a smart uniform), on board the good ship _Bon Accord_ of Aberdeen, freighted from London to Hong Kong, and a few who may survive to read these lines will recall the story I am about to tell--the plain unvarnished one of a sailor boy (I was then only sixteen) in the Indian seas.

We had left Swatow on the 24th of September, after getting on board a pilot, who was the cause of all the mischief that followed.

The _Bon Accord_ was a fine full-rigged clipper ship, of Aberdeen build, 900 tons, coppered to the bends, with masts that raked well aft; she was straight as an arrow in her planksheer, and was well armed, for there are some ugly customers to be met with in these seas beyond the ordinary track of our cruisers, as we found to our cost.

The ship's company consisted of Captain Archibald, a good and resolute seaman, who hailed from the port of Leith; three mates, the doctor, Joe Ruddersford, boatswain, two apprentices (myself and my chum, little Charlie Newcome, for we were three short according to our tonnage), and thirty men--thirty-eight all told, and a few lubberly Lascars who all bolted when the first sign of danger came.

We had been well warned on nearing Hong Kong to keep a bright look-out for Macao piratical boats, and particularly for one large lorcha manned by only such desperadoes as are to be found about these shores; and the captain of which, we were informed--Long Kiang by name--was as great a ruffian as ever figured of old, when Hong Kong was named by the Spaniards the Island of Ladrones, or thieves.

In a copy of the _China Mail_ brought on board at Aden, we read a description of Long Kiang, which told us that he had been pierced and scarred by many wounds; that one of his eyes had been scorched out by gunpowder, and that his left arm, having been severely shattered by a shot from a swivel gun, had never been properly set, the fragments had worked themselves out, and this gave him the singular appearance of having an arm and elbow adhering to the shoulder by the flesh and tendons alone; yet this arm possessed double the strength of his right, and it was his boast that he had slain more men by it than with the other.

We made the name of Long Kiang a kind of joke--a bogie--on board during the voyage through the bay of Bengal and into the China seas, and had nearly forgotten all about him, when without other adventure than a foul wind or so we reached Swatow, some fifty miles distant from Hong Kong, and after anchoring for a little time, left it, as I have said, on the 24th of September, with a light fair wind, and by sunset had made an offing.

As evening deepened upon the crimson sea, the wind became lighter; then it fell calm, and the fore and main courses were hauled up, while the top-sails were left to flap idly against the masts; and now it was that a native boat came alongside with a pilot, who offered to take us to our destination for a certain sum in British money, and his services were accepted by Captain Archibald, to whom he showed, of course, good and well-attested certificates.

No trousers covered the long, lean, mahogany-coloured legs of this official; an ample abba was rolled round his body, and a tattered keffiah, of no particular hue, thrown loosely round his head, partly muffled his face, so that we could see but little of his features.

The wind freshened after a time; we let fall the courses and stretched them home, glad to make way on the ship; which had been drifting with a current.

Instead of standing by the binnacle and giving instructions to a steersman, the native pilot grasped the wheel unaided in his powerful hands, and from time to time it seemed to me that he cast his eyes oftener to the shore than aloft to keep the canvas full. As he stood there between us and the moonlight, his tall and muscular form and fantastic dress, when viewed in dark outline, had something weird and mysterious about them, and so thought Charlie Newcome, who was watching him narrowly, as we stood on the starboard side of the quarter-deck.

The mate of the watch was forward, looking after the 'ground tackle' and large anchor, and the captain was below, when suddenly Charlie, on whom the tall, stark figure of the stranger seemed to make an impression, twitched my sleeve and whispered:

'Look, Bob! look now! By Jove! isn't he like--like----'

'Like who?'

'Long Kiang, that we talked so much about--the fellow described in the _China Mail_.'

'You've got Long Kiang on the brain,' said I, laughing; but the laughter ceased when I _did_ look.

The light breeze had partly deranged the Arab-like keffiah that enveloped his head, and by the rays of the binnacle lamp we saw that he was minus the left eye, that the whole of that side of his face was distorted as if scorched by powder, and for a moment or two the strange malformation of his left arm was distinctly visible, as he gasped one of the under-spokes of the wheel.

'It cannot be,' said I. 'How about his certificates, Charlie?'

'Another man's papers--stolen, no doubt.'

'If he should, after all, be Long Kiang,' I began, and then paused, for as I spoke the name seemed to catch his ear, and he turned on me his solitary eye, which in the moonlight glistened redly, like that of a rattlesnake. A knife of portentous length was in the same sheath with his chopsticks, a knife suggestive of cutting other things than yams or salt junk.

'Won't you youngsters turn in?' said the mate, coming aft. 'You are both in the middle watch.'

'Thank you, sir; not just yet,' said I, for, truth to tell, we were disposed to be wide awake as weasels.

Long Kiang had been such a standing joke during the latter part of our voyage--at least after leaving Aden--that neither of us, whatever we thought, ventured to tell our fears or suspicions to the mate, or to the men forward. While we were talking to the mate, the captain, who had come on deck, called him to the port side of the ship, which was going before the wind, but very slowly.

The captain was a tall, stout, and well-built man, with a florid complexion and a mass of iron-grey hair, luxuriant as when in youth, and likely to be so for years to come. There was an air of sturdy Scotch power and strength of mind and body about him that showed at once his resolute will and energetic brain.

He and the mate of the watch were in close conference at the port quarter, and looking at some object with an interest that soon became anxiety after they had resorted to the use of a night-glass, on seeing which the tall pilot grinned and showed all his white teeth like a row of dominoes.

'It is a lorcha--full of men, and evidently dodging us--a Macao lorcha, too,' said the captain, in a low voice. 'You see that craft?' he said suddenly to the pilot, who had evidently for some time affected not to do so.

'Si--si--yaas--senhor,' he replied in the broken lingo peculiar to Macao.

'And what do you think of her?'

'That piecey boat makey fightey if you meddle with her,' he replied quietly, in what is called 'pigeon English' in these regions.

'Oh, she will, will she?' exclaimed the captain; 'bring the starboard tacks aft. Keep the ship away a few points.'

But the breeze was so light that the lorcha was able to pass and repass us with ease, on each tack coming nearer us, and, indeed, it became but too evident that the steersman handled the ship in such a way that in a short time the stranger would be quite able to overhaul us. She was already within half-a-mile of us when Captain Archibald roughly accused the pilot of treachery, and ordered the third mate to take the wheel. Ere he could do so the native uttered a shout, quitted the spokes, letting them revolve at will, throwing the ship in the wind, and then he leaped overboard.

An exclamation burst from all, for had the breeze been fresher the top-mast would have snapped off at the caps and left us a helpless wreck; but the captain--quick, ready, and powerful--caught the wheel in a moment, brought the ship again upon a wind, and without looking whether the traitor who had left us sank or swam, ordered the ship to be close hauled, as she was clipper-built, and to be steered 'full and by.'

Some of the watch said the lorcha had picked up our pilot. Charlie and I now spoke, and not a doubt remained in the minds of all that we had been deceived by Long Kiang, who, using the papers of some man he had robbed, and very probably destroyed, had steered the ship to a part of the coast of Swatow, where his vessel and men had been concealed in some bay or creek.

By nine p.m. the lorcha, which we knew must be manned by the ferocious half-breeds who are the sons of Chinese and Tartar slaves, with a mixture of Caffre and Portuguese, the refuse of Macao, was so close, that in the moonlight we could see them distinctly, and reckoned that she must have at least seventy of these on board, and all armed to the teeth!

Charlie and I had read much about pirates and wild adventures, and had longed to meet some; and now the time had come with a vengeance!

The Scottish firm to whom the _Bon Accord_ belonged had wisely armed her well.

'Now, my lads,' cried Captain Archibald, as all the small arms were brought on deck, and the crew mustered aft the mizenmast, 'obey me; act well and steadily; have faith in yourselves, for without it no man succeeds.'

A cheer responded, and under the care of the old boatswain, who had sailed with Archibald for more than twenty years, the guns were cast loose and loaded, and as some of our fellows belonged to the Royal Naval Reserve, they were at no loss how to go to work.

In common with several others, Charlie and I had revolvers; but somehow, as I loaded mine, my heart was beating wildly, and, like Charlie Newcome, I thought of my mother, far away in Kent, as I had never thought of her before!

If captured, we knew that every soul on board would perish by a miserable death. Of a peaceful escape we had no chance, as the wind was so light, and many a glance was cast aloft to see how the sails drew.

The lorcha was stealing steadily after us in our wake now, for doubtless Long Kiang had told his crew of our guns, and knew that while she was kept astern they would be useless. Already the pirates were so close that we could hear their voices, and see knives, bayonets, and tulwars glittering among them, and towering amid the throng the tall and muscular figure of the ferocious Long Kiang, so we could have no doubt of the intentions of his followers now.

'She will soon be under our counter, sir,' said the old boatswain, 'and, as we have little or no steerage way on the ship, our eight-pounders will soon be useless.'

'Then let fly the starboard gun, and bring her to on the wind.'

Bang went the gun, its white smoke curling over the moonlighted water. A yell rose from the lorcha, and a red, flashing, and spluttering fire of musketry responded. No one was hit as yet, but white splinters were knocked off the woodwork on deck.

'Fill the yard heads! Stand off; Re-load, and then bring to again!' This man[oe]uvre was repeated more than once.

Bang! bang! went the six-pounders from the port quarter. The yells were redoubled, and as every man who was not at the guns was busy with his breach-loading rifle, the work soon became hot indeed. While lying close to the gunwale, Charlie and I fired at random with our revolvers under the open leeboard; yet the whole situation was so strangely sudden--so unexpected and improbable--that it seemed as if all this peril was happening not to me--Bob Slingsby--but to someone else.

Close by us was the captain, busy with his Winchester repeating rifle.

The yells of the infuriated pirates, maddened by the slaughter we made among them, became every moment closer and more appalling, and united with the sound of the firing, made such a din that we could not hear ourselves speak.

In the foretopmast of the lorcha they were now getting their horrible stink-balls ready, while, by the use of sweeps, they came close under our stern, and we could see their fierce, dark visages, their glowing eyes, and white glistening teeth. These stink-balls are an odious composition of mealed powder, saltpetre, pitch, and sulphur, rasped hoofs burned in the fire, assaf[oe]tida, and all manner of foul-smelling herbs, and they threw them, smoking and flaming, on the quarterdeck by dozens, compelling us to retire forward, if we would escape suffocation.

Several of our men had now fallen, killed or wounded, and the crew of the lorcha came swarming up the mizen chains, over the quarter, and rushed on madly with swords, knives, and fixed bayonets; and then it was the Lascars vanished by running below, or leaping overboard.

In vain our stoutest seamen strove to stem the tide by bayonet and rifle, and the scene became to me agonising and terrific. The whole deck became slippery with blood.

Captain Archibald, bleeding from a wound, was shot again in the forerigging.

'Oh, my wife and bairns!' he cried, and fell dead on the deck. The chief mate fell next: another and another fell, and I found myself seeking shelter from the bullets near the forecastle bitts.

Who had fallen or who escaped I knew not, but the crew of the lorcha were now in full possession of the _Bon Accord_. Two or three dark faces appeared above the topgallant forecastle. Shots were fired at me, and with a prayer on my lips I fell into the sea, and then thought all was over with me. Mechanically I swam, and the miscreants kept firing at me and some Lascars who were in the water.

An oar belonging to the lorcha was floating near me. I grasped it, and got close to the forechains. All voices on deck, save those of the captors, had ceased. The firing was at an end. A few dead bodies, thrown overboard, plunged heavily into the water near me, and raised great phosphorescent circles and bubbles of water in the gorgeous moonlight. The breeze had freshened a little; the reef points had ceased to patter upon the white sails which now curved gracefully out, and as the ship began to make a little way upon the water, I grasped the iron work under the forechains, and was carried with her.

Suddenly a rope's-end was lowered within my reach, and I heard a voice saying, in pigeon English:

'Comey up--me no killy you.'

I looked upward, and saw the terrible face of Long Kiang, with an indescribable gleam in his solitary eye, as it regarded me. Aware that it was either for life or death, and that I might as well trust him as perish by a bullet or of drowning by exhaustion, I allowed myself to be drawn on board, and one of the first sights I saw was the body of poor little Charlie Newcome, lying near one of the maindeck guns. Many dead and wounded pirates lay about.

On deck, I found myself the only living white!

Long Kiang grasped me by the arm with one hand, a long knife glittered in the other, and in a mixture of broken Portuguese and pigeon English, which would seem ridiculous to read, but was very terrible for me to hear, he questioned me about the ship; where she was from, what was her cargo, and where any money was stored. Finding that I was unable to give any account of the latter, Long Kiang, whose fierce eye when he was excited seemed to emit sparks as if struck from a flint--a peculiar phenomenon--gave me a terrible blow with the hand of his boneless arm, and, falling senseless, I remembered no more.

Meanwhile the Macao men completely sacked the ship. Rice, biscuit-bags, beef-barrels, the fowls in the coops, wines, spirits, bedding, clothes, all loose ropes, and everything portable were carried on board the lorcha, and setting fire to the cabin, intending to destroy all trace of the ship by burning her to the water's edge, they finally shoved off to the lorcha, and getting the spirit casks aboard, began, like savages as they were--to make merry and have a night of it--and a night they _had_ of it, that they little anticipated!

About eleven p.m. I recovered, and found myself alone in the silent ship. The lorcha lay off about a quarter of a mile distant, floating on the calm and lonely moonlit sea, over which came the united noise of laughter, singing, and shouts, as the orgies were continued in her bunks below and on deck. The odour of burning wood drew me to the cabin, which I found full of smoke; but on lifting the skylight, as well as the wound I had received would permit me, I found where the fire was smouldering, and after extinguishing it by a bucket or two of water, began to look about me with a heart torn by anxiety and apprehension. Lamps, chronometers, compasses, everything, were gone; but had they remained, of what use would they have been to me?

On the blood-stained deck, where still some bodies, slashed and mutilated, were lying, their pallid visages looking doubly pale under the moon, I crawled forward, concealing myself under the bulwarks, to avoid being seen by the occupants of the lorcha, which was floating like a log upon the water.

In the forecastle bunks and elsewhere, to my intense joy, I found seven of our own men, all more or less wounded, coming forth now from their places of concealment--the old boatswain among them--but all doubtful what to do or how to act; for the slightest sound or movement in the ship might bring these wretches on board of her again; so we all cowered together in the forecastle, considering the future, and listening to the shouting and singing on board the lorcha. These seemed to grow fainter the nearer she was drawn towards the _Bon Accord_ by the current; and some time after midnight they totally ceased, and the deepest silence reigned upon the sea, for the breeze had died completely away, and we heard only the slow flapping of the topsails, and the pattering of the reef-points above our heads.

Old Joe Rudderford, our boatswain, who was certain, he said, 'that every man Jack of them was drunk as a lord,' now resolved to take measures that would rid us of them effectually ere day dawned; and, acting under his orders, we put them in practice thus:

The port-quarter boat was softly lowered, on the side that was not next the lorcha, and he, with two men and myself, with oars muffled, pulled swiftly, yet noiselessly, off to her. All our revolvers were loaded, and Joe, the boatswain, had with him the largest and sharpest auger he could find in the carpenter's tool-chest, and a fierce, triumphant expression shone on his grave, grim Scotch face, which had a chin and eyebrows that expressed resolution and firmness of purpose.

Never shall I forget the keen and aching anxiety and excitement of that time, as we crept towards the hateful lorcha, and at every stroke of our oars, at every respiration, expected to see some of her merciless crew start up and fire on us; but all remained still--still as death--on board, as we got close under her starboard counter.

Our first mission was to cut away and scuttle her only boat, and while the boatswain, with strong hands and brawny arms wrenching round the cross-handle of the augur, bored a succession of large round holes between wind and water--with a few _below_ the latter--two of our men with knives cut away all the starboard shrouds or stays; and as we left her, and pulled away to our own ship, the sea was pouring into her, and we knew that unless the artificial leaks were discovered and plugged she must surely go down.

'Thank heaven, the breeze is freshening!' exclaimed Joe, as we regained our unfortunate ship, and hoisted in the quarter boat; and, weak and faint as we all were from wounds, soon Joe himself made sail on her. During all the hours of that eventful morning we struggled to trim the ship, to coil up and clear away the loose ropes and running rigging; to throw overboard the dead men of the lorcha, which was now settling down fast by the stern in the light of the waning moon, and every moment her bow and bowsprit seemed to tilt up higher in the air.

At last, just as day began to break, a great commotion seemed suddenly to take place on board. Cries and shouts floated towards us on the freshening breeze, and we could see Macaomen, Chinamen, and Caffres rushing wildly to and fro, looking evidently for their vanished boat; and then their united yells rent the sky, as the lorcha gave a great lurch to port and anon went down with every man on board of her. Many swam about for a time, but all sank in succession, for the land was far distant, and we were standing off north and by east before a pleasant breeze.

Next morning we fell in with a native fishing-boat with a crew of three men, who agreed, for the sum of five British sovereigns, to pilot us into Hong Kong, where we duly arrived, and came safely to anchor in the famous 'Red Harbour,' after a voyage that none of us are likely to forget.

We had some strange adventures on the way home, and with these I shall close my story.

Of our crew, after the encounter with Long Kiang, only seven, with the boatswain, Joe Rudderford, and myself, remained with the ship. We got a new captain, and made up our number again to thirty-eight hands, all told, from the company of a bark that had been cast away in the East Lamma Channel, and after they were shipped an interesting event occurred.

Among them was a miserable-looking young fellow who had been wrecked years before on the coast of China, and been kept as a kind of slave in a village near Tonquin. Joe Rudderford, observing the assiduity with which this young seaman--in gratitude for finding himself once more under the Union Jack--did his work, asked him what was his native place.

'Stonehaven,' said he; 'I am a Scotsman.'

'Stonehaven! I am from there myself. What is your name?'

'William Rudderford.'

'Had you ever a brother?' asked the boatswain, with sudden agitation.

'Yes,' replied the other; 'but it is many a year since he last saw me, in our mother's cottage beside the Cowie water. Poor Joe! I wonder if he is alive now!'

'I am Joe--your brother Joe, Willie!' exclaimed the boatswain; and now for several minutes their feelings so overpowered them that they could neither of them speak till relief was given by tears; and each had to tell the other a long story, which lies apart from mine.

We left Hong Kong for New Zealand, with a mixed cargo, and dropped down the Lamma Channel into the China Sea, and after leaving the port for which we were destined, gladly trimmed our course for London, thinking by this time we had seen a good deal of the world of waters; but after leaving the harbour of Otago, and working to windward of a headland named the Nuggets, we stood away for the Southern Pacific.

From that time the people in Dunedin, which we had left, and in London, for which we were bound, heard of us no more.

No homeward-bound craft reported having seen or spoken with the good ship _Bon Accord_, of Aberdeen; no message concerning her came from the antipodes; and, to torture the minds of our friends at home, the newspapers circulated all kinds of rumours--that bits of wreck had been seen, that we had among our cargo thirty tons of gunpowder, together with 'no end' of petroleum and turpentine, commodities certainly calculated to produce the direst effects if ignited.

Month after month rolled on, and not even the most slender tidings came of the beautiful ship, and apprehension of a terrible fate deepened into certainty, in the loving hearts of all who had friends on board.

Meanwhile, where were we?

In about the 50th degree of southern latitude we had for weeks pleasant gales and prosperous weather, so that we scarcely required to lift tack or sheet, but bore on merrily. Joe Rudderford and his newly-recovered brother Willie were inseparable, and the memory of little Charlie Newcome often came back to me sadly, especially in the night-watches, which he and I had so often shared together, for the ship and her surroundings were all the same in many respects as when he sailed in her. But we had not been long at sea before we discovered that our new captain was a bad seaman and a bully.

Every order was given with an oath. Myself and the other apprentices he called 'young whelps,' and even respectable old Joe Rudderford was often greeted with taunts which he received in silence, remembering 'the least said, the soonest mended.'

'He is a coward,' said Joe to me one day.

'What makes you think so?' I asked.

'Because he is a tyrant, and tyrants are always cowards. We'll never have a captain again so good as brave old Archibald.'

In that latitude a curious incident occurred to us. On a fine morning, when running on a splendid breeze, with our port tacks on board and royals and top-gallants set, Willie Rudderford, who had the watch, reported a sail on the weather-bow--a large ship, full-rigged, with most of her canvas set, but all in confusion, and some of it thrown slack. Her top-hamper suggested perfect disorder, and not a soul was to be seen on board, or responded to our hailing, after we edged close down to her.

We hove to, threw the mainyard in the wind, and Joe Rudderford, the first mate, and two hands, of whom I was one, boarded her in the dingy.

I shall never forget the nervous, anxious, exciting and yet eerie emotions felt, as we clambered up the side of that silent ship.

She proved to be a new one of some 800 tons burden, laden with silk and indigo, to the value of £150,000, as her papers showed, bound from Calcutta to the Cape; but how she came to be in these southern waters surpassed our comprehension. The oddest thing of all was that there seemed to have been a panic on board, for the deck and cabins were strewed with the clothes of ladies and children; jewel-cases, jewels, and Indian shawls lay everywhere; but the chief part of the baggage had been taken away. Still more extraordinary was it to find that she had been scuttled in every compartment, evidently for the purpose of sinking her. Private letters, that we had no time to examine, lay strewed about, and cloaks and coats, bonnets and caps, yet hung on the hooks in the cabin. But what was her story, or the fate of those who had abandoned her, or why they had done so, we were fated never to know; for though our captain was in the highest glee at picking up so valuable a derelict, and proposed to put a few of the crew on board, and sail in company, a heavy gale came on after sunset, with thick clouds, and when day broke she was nowhere to be seen, and must have gone down in the night.

And now I come to the mystery of our disappearance.

Our voyage had been an exceedingly prosperous one till we reached the vicinity of the Crozet Islands, in the South Pacific.

This solitary group, 'placed far amid the melancholy main,' comprising the Marion Rocks and the Twelve Apostles, lies midway between Prince Edward's Island and the Island of Kerguelen, the abode only of seals and sea swallows, and twenty-two degrees west of the equally solitary St. Paul's, whereon H.M.S. _Megara_ was cast away.

The Crozet Islands are all of volcanic origin--wild, rugged, and horrid in aspect, and nearly inaccessible. Their mountains rise in conical peaks to an elevation of from four to five thousand feet, and are covered by perpetual snow, while dense fogs frequently envelop their bases.