Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 September 1893 — THE PERILS OF Certain Eoglish Prisoners [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE PERILS OF Certain Eoglish Prisoners

, By Charles Dickens, (1857) CHAPTER I— Continued. 3 One of their three little children was deaf and dumb. Miss Maryon had been from the first with all the children, soothing them and dressing them (poor little things, they bad been brought out of their beds) and making them believe it was a game of play, so that some of them were now even laughing. I had been working hard with the others at the barricade, and had got up a pretty good breastwork within the gate. Drooce and the seven had come back, bringing in the people from the SignalHjU,andhad worked.along with, us; but I had not so much as spoken a word to Drooce, nor had Drooce so much as spoken a word to me, for we were both too busy. The breastwork was now finished, and I found Miss Maryon at my side with a child in her arms. Her dark hair was fastened round her head with a band. She had a quantity of it, and it looked even richer and more precious, put up hastily out of her way, than I had seen it look when carefully arranged. She was very pale, but extraordinarily quiet" and still. “Dear, good Davis,” said she, “I

have been waiting to speak cne word to you." __ I turned to her directly. If I had received a musket-ball in the head and she had stood there I almost believe I should have turned to her before I dropped. “This pretty little creature,” said she, kissing the child in her arms, who was playing with her hair and trying to pull it down, “can not hear what we say —can hear nothing. I trust you so much, and have such great confidence in you that I want you to make me a 'promise.” “What is it, Miss?” “That if we are defeated and you are absolutely sure of my being taken, you will kill me.” “I shall not be alive to do it, Miss. I shall have died in your defense before it comes to that. They must step across my body to lay hands on you.” . “But if you are alive, you brave soldier.” How she looked at me! “And if you cannot save me from the pirates living, you will save me dead. Tell me so.” I told her I would do that at the last if all else failed. She took my hand —my rough, coarse hand —and put it to her lips. She put it to the child’s lips and the child kissed it. I believe I had the strength of a half dozen men in me from that moment until the light was over. All this time Mr. Commissioner Pordage had been wanting to make a proclamation to the pirates to lay down their arms and go away, and everybody had been hustling him about and tumbling over him while he was calling for pen and ink to write it with. Mrs. Pordage, too. had some curious ideas about the British respectability of her nightcap (which had so many frills to it, growing in layers one inside the other, as if it were a vegetable of the artichoke sort), and she wouldn’t take the nightcap off, and would be angry when it got crushed by the other ladies who were handling things about, and she made as much trouble as her husband did. But as we were now forming for the defense of the place, they were both poked out of the way with no ceremony. The children and ladies were got into the little trench which surrounded the silver-house (we were afraid of leaving them in any of the light buildings, lest they should be set on fire), and we made the best disposition we could. There was a pretty good store, in point of amount, of tolerable swords and cutlasses. Those were issued. There were, also, perhaps a score or So of spare muskets. Those were' brought out. To my astonishment, Ijttle Mrs. Fisher, that I had taken for a doll and i babf, was notbnly Very active la that serrioe, but.' volunteered to Ipad the spare arms, : r. “Fori understand it well," says cheerfully, Without a in her vole* iaue/w ... iH»ssss»’ „■ <3 ««<•'

too,’’.says Miss Maryon, just In the Steady and busy behind where I stood those two beautiful and delicate young women fell to handling the guns, hammering the flints, looking to the locks and quietly directing others to pass up powder and bullets from hand to hand as unfl in ching as the best of tried soldiers. Sergt. Drooce had brought in word that the pirates were •strong in numbers —over a hundred was his estimate —and that they were not even then all landed, for,lie had seen them in a very good position on the further side of the Signal Hill, evidently waiting for the rest of the men to come up. In the present pause, the first we had had since the alarm, he was telling this over again to Mr. Macey, when Mr. Macev‘Suddenly cried out: “The Signal! Nobody has thought of the signal!” We knew of no signal, so we could not have thought of it, “What signal do you mean, sir?” says Sergt. Drooce, looking sharp at him. “There is a pile of wood upon the Signal Hill. If it could be lighted—which never has been done yet—it would be a signal of distress to the mainland.” Charker cries directly: “Sergt. Drooce, dispatch me on that duty. Give me the two men who were on guard with me to-night, and I’ll light the fire if it can be done.”

1 “And if it can’t, Corporal—” Mr. Macey strikes in. “Look at these ladies and children, sir!” says Charker. “I’d sooner light myself, than not try any chance to save them.” We gave him a hurrah! —it burst from us, come of it what might — and he got his two men, and was let out at the gate and crept away. I had no sooner come back to my place from being one of the party to handle the gate, than Miss Maryon said in a low voice behind me: “Davis, will you look at this powder. This is not right?” I turned my head. Christian George King again, and treachery again! Sea water had been conveyed into the magazine, and every grain of powder was spoiledl “Stay a moment,” said Sept. Drooce when I had told him without causing a movement in a muscle in his face, “look to your pouch, my ■ lad. You, Tom Packer, look to your pouch, confound you! Look to your pouches, all you marines.” The same artful savage had got at them, somehow or another, and the ; cartridges were all unserviceable, j “Hum!” says the Sergeant, “look to i your loading, men. You are right so far?” Yes; we were right so far. “Well, my lads, and gentlemen all,” says the Sergeant, “this will be a hand-to-hand affair, and so much the better.” ‘He treated himself to a pinch of snuff and stood up, square-shoul-dered and broad-chested, in the light of the moon —which was now very bright—as cool as if he was waiting for a play to begin. He stood quiet, and we all stood ouiet, for the matter of something like half an hour. I took notice from such whispered talk as there was, how little we, that the silver did not belong to, thought about it, and how much that the people it did belong to thought about it. At the end of the half hour it was reported from the gate that Charker and the two were falling back on us, pursued by about a dozen. “Sally! Gate party, under Gill Davis,” says the Sergeant, “and bring ’em in. Like men, now!" We were not long about it. and we brought them in. ‘‘Don’t take me,” says Chalker, holding me around the neck aud stumbling down at my feet when the gate was fast,"“don’t .take me near the ladies or the children. Gill. They had better not see death till it cannot be helped. They’ll see it soon enough.”——:—— “Harry!" I answered, holding up his head. “Comrade!" He was cut to pieces. The signal had been secured by the first pirate party that landed; his hair was all singed off, and his face was blackened with the running pitch from a tprcn,, .... t. <- 4 i .1/ i-auHfr He made no complaint of pain, or. of anything. “Good-bye, old was all ho said, with smile. “I’ve ii<d ’-.'flijnxn! Bdt tmatns odw'.d©«a

Having helped, to lay hia poor body on one-side 1 went back to my post.? Sergt. Drooce looked at me, with his eyebrows a little lifted. I nodded. “Close up here men, and gentlemen all!” said the Sergeant. “A place too many in the line.” The pirates wer e so close upon us at this time that the foremost of them were already before the gate. More and more came up with a great Soise and shouting loudly. When we believed from the sound that they were all there we gave them three English cheers. The poor little children joined and were so fully convinced of our being at play that they enjoyed the noise and were heard clapping their hands in the silence that followed. Our disposition was this, beginning wjth the rear..,Mrs. Venning, holding her child in her arm, sat on the steps of the little square trench surrounding the silver house, encouraging and directing those women and children as she might have done in the happiest and easiest time of her life. Then there was an armei line under Mr. Macey across the width of the inclosure, facing that way and having their backs tow ard the gate, in order that they might watch the walls and prevent our being taken by surprise. And then there was a space of about eight or ten feet deep in which the spare arms were,and in which Miss Maryon and|Mrs. Fisher, their hands and dresses blackened with the spoilt gunpowder, worked on their knees, tying such things as knives, old bayonets and spear heads to the muzzles of useless muskets. Then there was a second armed line, under Sergt. Drooce, also across the width of the inclosure, but facing the gate. Then came the breastwork we had made, with a siz-zag way through it for me and my little party to hold good in retreatingas long as we could when we were driven from the gate. We all knew that it was impossible to hold the place long, and that our only hope was in the timely discovery of the plot by the boats and in their coming back.

I and my men were now thrown forward to the gate. From a spyhole, I could see the whole crowd of Pirates. There were Malays among them, Dutch, Maltese, Greeks, Sambos, Negroes, and convict Englishmen from the West India Islands; among the last, him with the one eye and the patch acress the nose. There were some Portuguese, too, and a few Spaniards. The captain was a Portuguese; a little man with very large earrings, under a very broad hat, and a great bright shawl twisted about his shoulders. They were all strongly armed, but like a boarding party, with pikes, swords, cutlasses, and axes. I noticed a good many pistols, but not a gun of any kind among them. This gave me to understand that they had considered that a continued roll of musketry might perhaps have Heard on the mainland; also, that for the reason that fire would be seen from the mainland, they would not set the Fort in flames and roast us alive; which was one of their favorite ways of carrying on. I looked about for Christian George King and if I had seen him I am much mistaken if he would not have received my one round of ball cartridge in his head. But no Christian George King was visible. A sort of a wild Portuguese demon, who seemed either fierce-mad or fierce-drunk —but they ail seemed either one or the other —came forword with the black flag, and gave it a wave or two. After that the Portuguese captain called out in shrill English: “I say! you English fools! Open the gate! surrender!”

As we kept close and quiet,.„hesaid something to his men which I didn’t understand, and when he had said it, the one-eyed English rascal with the patch (who had stepped out when he began), said it again in English. It was only this: “Boys of the black flag, this is to be quickly done. Take all the prisoners you can. If they don't yield kill the children to make them. Forward.” Then, they all came at the gate, and in another half minute were splashing and splitting it in. We struck at them through the gaps and shivers, and we dropped many of them, too; but their very weight would have carried such a gate, if they had been unarmed. I spon found Sergt. Drooce at my side, forming us six remaining marines in line—Tom Packer next to me—and ordering us to fall back three paces and, as they broke in, to give them our one little Volley at short distance. “Then,” says he, “receive them behind your breastworks on the bayonet, and at least let every man of you pin one of the cursed cockchafers through the body!” We checked them by our fire, slight as it was, and we checked them at the breastwork. However, they broke over it like swarms of devils —they were, really and truly, more devils than men — and then it was hand to hand indeedWe clubbed our muskets and laid about us; even then those two ladies —always behind me —were steady and ready with the arms. I had a lot of Maltese and Malays upon me, and, but for a broadsword that Miss Maryon’s own hand put in mine, should have got my •end from them. But, was that all? No, I saw a heap of banded dark ’Kali' and a white dress comes thrice between me and thdnd;' under my own, raised right arm, which eaph. time might have destroyed,the wCarer of the White dress; aiid eich ifitiri orter-'df "this' 'fot' 'went dbWtv,-

I HAD A LOT OF MALTESE AND MALAYS UPON ME.