For Love of Country - Cyrus Townsend Brady (great book club books txt) 📗

shrouded in clouds of smoke. At the moment of command Seymour had quickly ordered the helm shifted suddenly, and the Randolph had swung round so that she lay at a broad angle off the quarter of the Yarmouth. The thunderous roar of the heavy guns at short range was immediately followed by the crashing of timber, as the heavy shot took deadly effect, amid the cheers and yells and curses and groans and shrieks of the wounded and startled men on the liner, while three hearty cheers rang out from the Randolph.

The advantage of the first blow in the grim game, the unequal combat, was with the little one.

"How now, captain!" shouted the colonel, in high exultation. "Won't fight, eh! What do you call this?"

"Fire! fire! Let him have it, men, and be damned to you! The man 's a hero; 't was cleverly done," roared the captain, excitedly. "I retract. Give it to him, boys! Give it to the impudent rebel!" he roared.

Katharine, forgot by every one in the breathless excitement of the past few moments, bowed her head on her hands on the rail, and breathed a prayer of thankfulness, oblivious of everything but that her lover had proved himself worthy the devotion her heart so ungrudgingly extended him. There was great confusion on board the Yarmouth from this sudden and unexpected discharge, which, delivered at short range, had done no little execution on the crowded ship; but the officers rallied their men speedily with cool words of encouragement.

"Steady, men, steady."

"Give it back to them."

"Look sharp now."

"Aim! Fire!"

And the forty-odd heavy guns roared out in answer to the determined attack. The effect of such a broadside at close range would have been frightful, had not the Randolph drawn so far ahead, and her course been so changed, that a large part of it passed harmlessly astern of her. One gun, however, found its target, and that was one aimed and fired by the hand of Lord Desborough himself: a heavy shot, a thirty-two, from one of the massive lower-deck guns of the Yarmouth, which the pleasant weather permitted them to use effectively, came through one of the after gun-ports of the Randolph, and swept away the line of men on the port side of the gun. Some of the other shot did slight damage also among the spars and gear, and several of the crew were killed or wounded in different parts of the ship; but the Randolph was practically unharmed, and standing boldly down to cross the stern of the Yarmouth to rake her. But the English captain was a seaman, every inch of him, and his ship could not have been better handled; divining his bold little antagonist's purpose, the Yarmouth's helm was put up at once, and in the smoke she fell off and came before the wind almost as rapidly as did the Randolph, her promptness frustrating the endeavor, as Seymour was only able to make an ineffectual effort to rake her, as she flew round on her heels. The starboard battery of the Yarmouth had been manned as she fell off, and the port battery of the Randolph was rapidly reloaded again. The manoeuvre had given the Englishmen the weather-gage once more, the two ships now having the wind on the port quarter. The two batteries were discharged simultaneously, and now began a running fight of near an hour's duration.

Seymour was everywhere. Up and down the deck he walked, helping and sustaining his men, building up new gun's crews out of the shattered remains of decimated groups of men, lending a hand himself on a tackle on occasion; cool, calm, unwearied, unremitting, determined, he desperately fought his ship as few vessels were ever fought before or since, imbuing, by his presence and example and word, his men with his own unquailing spirit, until they died as uncomplainingly and as nobly as did those prototypes of heroes,--another three hundred in the pass at Thermopylae!

The guns were served on the Randolph with the desperate rapidity of men who, awfully pressed for time, had abandoned hope and only fought to cripple and delay before they were silenced; those on the Yarmouth, on the contrary, were fired with much more deliberation, and did dreadful execution. The different guns were disabled on the Randolph by heavy shot; adjacent ports were knocked into one, the sides shattered, boats smashed, rails knocked to pieces, all of the weather-shrouds cut, the mizzenmast carried away under the top, and the wreck fell into the sea,--fortunately, on the lee side, the little body of men in the top going to a sudden death with the rest. The decks were slippery with blood and ploughed with plunging shot, which the superior height of the Yarmouth permitted to be fired with depressed guns from an elevation. Solid shot from the heavy main-deck batteries swept through and through the devoted frigate; half the Randolph's guns were useless because of the lack of men to serve them; the cockpit overflowed with the wounded; the surgeon and his mates, covered with blood, worked like butchers, in the steerage and finally in the ward room; dead and dying men lay where they fell; there were no hands to spare to take them below, no place in which they could lie with safety, no immunity from the searching hail which drove through every part of the doomed ship. Still the men, cheered and encouraged by their officers, stood to their guns and fought on. Presently the foretopmast went by the board also, as the long moments dragged along, Seymour was now lying on the quarter-deck, a bullet having broken his leg, another having made a flesh-wound in his arm; he had refused to go below to have his wounds dressed, and one of the midshipmen was kneeling by his side, applying such unskilful bandages as he might to the two bleeding wounds. Nason had been sent for, and was in charge, under Seymour's direction. That young man, all his nervousness gone, was most ably seconding his dauntless captain.

The two ships were covered with smoke. It was impossible to tell on one what was happening on the other; but the steady persistence with which the Randolph clung to her big enemy had its effect on the Yarmouth also, and the well-delivered fire did not allow that vessel any immunity. In fact, while nothing like that on the frigate, the damage was so great, and so many men had fallen, that Captain Vincent determined to end the conflict at once by boarding the frigate. The necessary orders were given, and a strong party of boarders was called away and mustered on the forecastle, headed by Beauchamp and Hollins; among the number were little Montagu, with other midshipmen. Taking advantage of the smoke and of the weather-gage, the Yarmouth was suddenly headed for the Randolph. As the enormous bows of the line-of-battle ship came slowly shoving out of the smoke, towering above them, covered with men, cutlass or boarding pike in hand, Seymour discerned at once the purpose of the manoeuvre. Raising himself upon his elbow to better direct the movement,--

"All hands repel boarders!" he shouted, his voice echoing through the ship as powerfully as ever.

This was an unusual command, as it completely deprived the guns of their crews; but he rightly judged that it would take all the men they could muster to repel the coming attack, and none but the main-deck guns of the Yarmouth would or could be fired, for fear of hitting their own men in the mêlée on the deck. The Randolph was a wreck below, at best; but while anything held together above her plank shears, she would be fought. The men had reached that desperate condition when they ceased to think of odds, and like maddened beasts fought and raved and swore in the frenzy of the combat. The thrice-decimated crew sprang aft, rallying in the gangway to meet the shock, Nason at their head, followed close by old Bentley, still unwounded. As the bow of the Yarmouth struck the Randolph with a crash, one or two wounded men, unable to take part in repelling the boarders but still able to move, who had remained beside the guns, exerted the remaining strength they possessed to discharge such of the pieces as bore, in long raking shots, through the bow of the liner; it was the last sound from their hot muzzles.

The Yarmouth struck the Randolph just forward of the mainmast; the men, swarming in dense masses on the rail and hanging over the bowsprit ready to leap, dropped on her deck at once with loud cheers. A sharp volley from the few marines left on the frigate checked them for a moment,--nobody noticing at the time that the Honorable Giles had fallen in a limp heap back from the rail upon his own deck, the blood staining his curly head; but they gathered themselves together at once, and, gallantly led, sprang aft, handling their pistols and pikes and waving their cutlasses. Nason was shot in a moment by Hollins' pistol, Beauchamp was cut in two by a tremendous sweep of the arm of the mighty Bentley, and the combat became at once general. Slowly but surely the Americans were pressed back; the gangways were cleared; the quarter-deck was gained; one by one the brave defenders had fallen. The battle was about over when Seymour noticed a man running out in the foreyard of the Yarmouth with a hand-grenade. He raised his pistol and fired; the man fell; but another resolutely started to follow him.

Bentley and a few other men, and one or two officers and a midshipman, were all who were able to bear arms now.

"Good-by, Mr. Seymour," cried Bentley, waving his hand and setting his back against the rail nearest to the Yarmouth, which had slowly swung parallel to the Randolph and had been lashed there. The old man was covered with blood from two or three wounds, but still undaunted. Two or three men made a rush at him; but he held them at bay, no man caring to come within sweep of that mighty arm which had already done so much, when a bullet from above struck him, and he fell over backward on the rail mortally wounded.

Seymour raised his remaining pistol and fired it at the second man, who had nearly reached the foreyard arm; less successful this time, he missed the man, who threw his grenade down the hatchway. Seymour fainted from loss of blood.

"Back, men! back to the ship, all you Yarmouths!" cried Captain Vincent, as he saw the lighted grenade, which exploded and ignited a little heap of cartridges left by a dead powder-boy before the magazine. Alas! there was no one there to check or stop the flames. The English sailors sprang back and up the sides and through the ports of their ship with frantic haste; the lashings were being rapidly cut by them, and the braces handled.

"Come aboard, men, while you can," cried Captain Vincent to the Americans. "Your ship 's afire; you can do no more; you 'll blow up in a moment!"

The little handful of Americans were left alone on their ship. The only officer still standing lifted his sword and shook it impotently at the Yarmouth in reply; the rest did not stir. The smoke of battle had now settled away, and the whole ghastly scene was revealed. A woman's cry rang out fraught