Held Fast For England: A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) by G. A. Henty (reading a book .TXT) 📗

in place of those that had been damaged, taking those of the brig first captured for the purpose.

"They fit very well," Joe Lockett said, "and we have not time to lose. We sail again, this afternoon. The captain says there is nothing to prevent our going out, now; and as the Spanish squadron may be back any day, we might have to run the gauntlet to get out, if we lost the present chance. So he is not going to waste an hour.

"Crofts has already sold the grain, and discharged it. The hull is worth but little; and the captain has sold her, as she stands, to a trader for two hundred pounds. I expect he has bought her to break up for firewood, if the siege goes on. If it doesn't, he will sell her again, afterwards, at a good profit. Of course, it is a ridiculous price; but the captain wanted to get her off his hands, and would have taken a ten pound note, rather than be bothered with her.

"So by tonight we shall be across at Ceuta and, if the wind holds east but another day, we shall be through the Straits on our way home.

"They are going to shift two of our 18 pounders on board the barque, and I am going to command her, and to have fifteen men on board. Crofts commands the poleacre, with ten men. The rest, of course, go in the brig. We shall keep together, and steer well out west into the Atlantic, so as to give as wide a berth as possible to Spaniards and Frenchmen. If we meet with a privateer, we ought to be able to give a good account of him; if we run across a frigate, we shall scatter; and it will be hard luck if we don't manage to get two out of the three craft into port.

"We have been shifting some more of the silver again, this morning, from the barque into the other two vessels; otherwise, as she has the lead on board, she would be the most valuable prize. As it is now, the three are of about equal value."

"Well, we wish you a pleasant voyage," Captain O'Halloran said. "I suppose we shall see you back here again, before long."

"Yes, I should think so; but I don't know what the captain means to do. We have had no time to talk, this morning. I daresay you will meet him, on shore; he has gone to the post office, to get his papers signed. We have been quite pestered, this morning, by men coming on board to buy wine out of the polacre; but the captain wouldn't have the hatches taken off. The Spaniards may turn up, at any moment; and it is of the greatest importance our getting off, while the coast is clear. It is most unfortunate, now, that we did not run straight in, yesterday; instead of laying to, to wait for night."

They did not meet the captain in the town and, from the roof, Bob saw the three vessels get up sail, early in the afternoon, and make across for the African coast.

The doctor came in, in the evening.

"Well, Bob, so I hear you have been fighting, and commanding ships, and doing all sorts of things. I saw Captain Lockett in the town and, faith, if you had been a dozen admirals, rolled into one, he couldn't have spoken more highly of you.

"It seems, Mrs. O'Halloran, that Bob has been the special angel who has looked after poor Jack, on board the Antelope."

"What ridiculous nonsense, doctor!" Bob exclaimed, hotly.

"Not at all, Bob; it is too modest you are, entirely. It is yourself is the boy who has done the business, this time; and it is a silver tay service, or some such trifle as that, that the owners will be sending you, and small blame to them. Captain Lockett tells me he owns a third of the ship; and he reckons the ship's share of what they have taken, this little cruise, won't be less than five-and-twenty thousand.

"Think of that, Mrs. O'Halloran, five-and-twenty thousand pounds! And here is Edward Burke, M.D., working his sowl out, for a miserable eight or ten shillings a day."

"But what has Bob done?"

"I hadn't time to learn it all, Mrs. O'Halloran, for the captain was in a hurry. It seems to me that the question ought to be, what is it that he hasn't done?

"It all came in a heap, together, and I am not sure of the exact particulars; but it seems to me that he swam out and cut the cable of a Spanish sloop of war, and took the end in his mouth and towed her out to sea, while the guns were blazing in all directions at him. Never was such an affair!

"Then he humbugged the captain of an English frigate, and the commander of the Spanish forts, and stole a vessel chock full of silver; and did I don't know what, besides."

Bob went off into a shout of laughter, in which the others joined.

"But what is the meaning of all this nonsense, Teddy?" Carrie asked, as soon as she recovered her composure. "Is there anything in it, or is it all pure invention?"

"Is there anything in it? Haven't I been telling you that there is twenty-five thousand pounds in it, to the owners, and as much more to the crew; and didn't the captain vow and declare that, if it hadn't been for Bob, instead of going home to divide all this treasure up between them, every man Jack of them would be, at this moment, chained by the leg in a dirty Spanish prison, at Malaga!"

"Well, what does it all mean, Bob? There is no getting any sense out of Dr. Burke."

"It is exactly what I told you, Carrie. We anchored close to a craft that we thought was a merchantman, and that we meant to attack in our boats. I swam on board her in the dark--to see if they were keeping a good watch, and that sort of thing--and when I got on board, I found she was a ship of war, with a lot of heavy guns, and prepared to take us by surprise when we attacked her; so of course, when I swam back again with the news, Captain Lockett cut his cable and towed the brig out in the dark.

"As to the other affair that the doctor is talking about, I told you that, too; and it is exactly as I said it was. The only thing I had to do with it was that it happened to be my idea to keep the Spanish colours flying, and let the frigate keep on firing at us. The idea turned out well; but of course, if I had not thought of it somebody else would, so there was nothing in it, at all."

"Well, Bob, you may say what you like," Doctor Burke said, "but it is quite evident that the captain thought there was a good deal in it.

"And I think really, Gerald, that you and Mrs. O'Halloran have good reason to feel quite proud of him. I am not joking at all, when I say that Captain Lockett really spoke as if he considered that the good fortune they had had is very largely due to him. He said he hoped he should have Bob on board for another cruise."

"I certainly shall not go any more with him," Bob said, indignantly, "if he talks such nonsense about me, afterwards. As if there was anything in swimming two or three hundred yards, on a dark night; or in suggesting the keeping a flag up, instead of pulling it down."

When the Brilliant, however, came in two days later, Captain Langton called upon Mrs. O'Halloran; and told her that he did so in order to acquaint her with the extremely favourable report Captain Lockett had made, to him, of Bob's conduct; and that, from what he had said, it was evident that the lad had shown great courage in undertaking the swim to the Spanish vessel, and much promptness and ready wit in suggesting the device that had deceived him, as well as the Spaniards.

Captain Langton told the story, that evening, at General Eliott's dinner table; and said that although it was certainly a good joke, against himself, that he should have thus assisted a privateer to carry off two valuable prizes that had slipped through the frigate's hands, the story was too good not to be told. Thus, Bob's exploit became generally known among the officers of the garrison; and Captain O'Halloran was warmly congratulated upon the sharpness, and pluck, of his young brother-in-law.

Captain Lockett's decision, to be off without any delay, was fully justified by the appearance of a Spanish squadron in the bay, three days after his departure. It consisted of two seventy-fours, two frigates, five xebecs, and a number of galleys and small armed vessels. The men-of-war anchored off Algeciras; while the rest of the squadron kept a vigilant patrol at the mouth of the bay, and formed a complete blockade.

Towards the end of the month, the troops were delighted by the issue of an order that the use of powder for the hair was, henceforth, to be abandoned.

Vessels were now continually arriving from Algeciras, with troops and stores; and on the 26th the Spaniards began to form a camp, on the plain below San Roque, three miles from the garrison. This increased in size, daily, as fresh regiments arrived by land.

Orders were now issued that all horses in the garrison, except those whose owners had a store of at least one thousand pounds of grain, were either to be shot or turned out through the gates.

There was much excitement when two Dutch vessels, laden with rice and dried fruit, made their way in at night through the enemy's cruisers. Their cargoes were purchased for the troops; and these vessels, and a Venetian that had also got through, carried off with them a large number of Jewish, Genoese, and other traders, with their families, to ports in Barbary or Portugal. Indeed, from this time every vessel that went out carried away some of the inhabitants.

The position of these poor people was indeed serious. The standing order on the Rock was that every inhabitant, even in time of peace, should have in store six months' provisions; but the order had never been enforced, and few of them had any supplies of consequence. As they could not expect to be supplied from the garrison stores, the greater number had no resource but to leave the place. Some, however, who were better provided, obtained leave to erect wooden huts at the southern end of the Rock, so as to have a place of shelter to remove to, in case the enemy bombarded the town.

The Spaniards had, by this time, mounted their cannon in forts St. Philip and St. Barbara. Vast quantities of stores were landed at Point Mala, at the end of the bay. Some fifteen thousand men were under canvas, in their camp; and strong parties were constantly employed in erecting works near their forts. The garrison on their side were continually strengthening and adding to their batteries, erecting palisades and traverses, filling the magazines in the works, and preparing for an attack; and on the 11th of September some of the guns were opened upon the enemy's working parties and, for a time, compelled them to desist.

From the upper batteries on the Rock, a complete view was obtainable of all the enemy's operations and, as they were seen to be raising mortar batteries, preparations were made to diminish the effects of a bombardment of the town. For this purpose the pavement of the streets was removed, and the ground ploughed up; the towers and most conspicuous buildings taken down; and traverses carried across the streets, to permit communications to be carried on.

Early in October the Engineers and Artillery managed, with immense labour, to mount a gun on the summit of the Rock; and as, from this point, an almost bird's-eye view was obtained of the Spanish works, the fire of the gun annoyed them greatly at their work. This was maintained, however, steadily but, in spite of this interference with their operations, the Spaniards on the 20th of October opened thirty-five embrasures, in three batteries, in a line between their two forts.

Provisions of every kind were now becoming very dear. Fresh meat was from three to four shillings a pound, chickens twelve shillings a couple, ducks from fourteen to eighteen. Fish was equally dear; and vegetables hardly to be bought, at any price. Flour was running very short, and rice was served out instead of it.

On the 14th of November the privateer Buck, armed with twenty-four 9 pounders, was seen making into the bay. Two Spanish ships of the line, a frigate, two xebecs, and twenty-one small craft set out to intercept her. The cutter--seeing