Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, August 1847

All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost! . . . . . . . . .

He’ll be hanged yet; Though every drop of water swear against it, And gape at wid’st to glut him. Tempest.

The next morning, at the appointed time, accompanied by a young Spaniard, as second, Willis was on the beach, where he found De Vere and his friend. The foes saluted each other with the most scrupulous politeness. Ten paces were measured as the distance, and they took their positions.

The signal was given, and both fired, but with unequal success; at the report De Vere sprung up, and then fell senseless at full length upon the sand; Willis was unharmed, and merely asking his opponent’s second if his friend wished another shot—to which, of course, he replied in the negative—he got into his boat, and without even looking at De Vere, pulled back to the harbor.

Anxious to get away from Havana as soon as possible, for, since his rencounter with De Vere, he was confident that Francisca must know his true character, or rather the character De Vere had falsely given him, and not desiring to meet her or her father, Willis made all possible dispatch to get through with his business; and in two days after the duel he was again at sea, and bound for Africa.

The cargo he would bring with him was engaged to a trader on the other side of the island, and he did not intend returning to Havana.

He had a quick and fortunate run over, and was four days out, on his return, with the best lot of negroes he had ever obtained, all grown men, strong and healthy, when he fell in with a sail.

He discovered it to be a large ship, to leeward of him some six or eight miles; he knew her to be a man-of-war, by the squareness of her yards, and who, as soon as she saw the Maraposa, took another pull at the lee-braces, and put her helm a little more a-lee; but she might as well have tried to sail in the teeth of a tornado as out-weather the schooner, though the accuracy with which she maintained her distance and position proved her to be a remarkably fast sailer. Willis had no fear of the ship overtaking him, and held on his course; day after day, for nearly a week, the two vessels were in the same relative position, almost on parallel lines, but between six and eight miles apart; both under all the sail they could carry. On the eighth day it fell dead calm, and both the ship and schooner lay motionless on the smooth water.

The scorching beams of an equatorial sun rendered the heat insufferable, even on deck; but in the hold of the slaver the heat and the stench were absolutely awful! and the poor negroes, nearly frantic, were continually shrieking for water and air.

Their cries brought them small relief. The attention of Willis and the crew was too much occupied by other matters, to pay any more attention to the blacks than see they were secure; for as soon as the wind died away, the ship had commenced getting out her boats. Already had Willis seen three of them lowered over, and he felt confident the captain of the sloop-of-war intended attacking him with the whole strength of his crew.

One! two! three! more boats he counted, as they swung an instant in the air, and then dropped in the water. Aided by his glass, he saw the men hurrying down the ship’s side to man them.

But he knew it was a work of time and labor to row eight miles in the intense heat, and it was not until he had seen the launch, four cutters, and even the gig, six boats in all, pull round the sloop’s bows, crowded with men, and forming a line, stretch out toward the Maraposa, that he commenced preparations to repel the attack.

The force approaching was formidable, nearly an hundred men, and the crew of the slaver, counting all hands, even Willis and the cook, was barely half the number.

The schooner, acting only on the defensive, and being so much higher out of the water than the boats, made this disparity in numbers less to be dreaded; and the confidence Willis had in his men, and they in him, made the slavers feel secure in the result of the approaching struggle; and it was with a loud and hearty shout that his crew answered, when Willis called—

“All hands to quarters!”

“Open the magazine! Trice up the boarding-nettings! and stand by, to give those English fools h—l! for meddling with what don’t concern them.”

These orders were soon obeyed, and the schooner with her six caronnades looking through the port-holes, double boarding-nettings triced up, and her desperate crew armed to the teeth, with calm, determined resolution printed on their countenances, quietly watching the coming foe, was the personification of men “grown old in desperate hardihood;” fortified with the determination of resisting to the death.

The line of black boats, with their long oars regularly rising and falling, resembled huge beetles, as they came across the glass-like sea; and in an hour and a half they were within a mile of the schooner. Shot after shot was fired at them from the long gun of the Maraposa, but unharmed they steadily approached to within the distance of a hundred yards, when, with a loud huzza, they formed abreast, the launch a little in advance, and made a dash at the schooner, with the intention of all boarding at once.

Then was heard the thunder of the three larboard caronnades, as they hurled forth their iron hail, and a yell of agony, and the sudden swamping of the launch and fourth cutter attested the deadly effect of the fire; but the other boats undaunted, before the guns could be again loaded, had reached the vessel, and, with shouts and hoarse huzzas, were trying to board her.

But the attempt was futile! with boarding-pike, cutlas point, and pistol shot, her hardy crew repulsed them. Again! and again! with the determined and dogged courage of English tars, they endeavored to get on deck, but the men of the slaver, cheered on by Willis, drove them back each time with loss, and the lieutenant in command of the expedition, fearing all his men would be lost, drew off. Another broadside from the schooner sunk one more of the boats, and pulling as quickly as possible out of the range of the slavers’ guns, with slow and feeble strokes, crest fallen, and deprived of half their boats and men, the attacking party proceeded toward their ship.

Ere they had accomplished a third of the distance, the ship was seen to square away her yards, and commenced moving through the water to meet them; the wind had sprung up again, but coming out from the south’ard, it brought the ship to windward, instead of to leeward, as she had been before the calm, and feeling its effects first, she was gathering way before the schooner felt it; soon however it reached the slaver, and with her sheets eased off, the Maraposa commenced merrily to continue her course.

Willis had only four men killed in the late action, and with his feelings elated at the severe repulse he had given the men-of-wars-men, whom he cordially hated for their incessant persecution of the slavers, and whose boasted philanthropy, the motive which they pretend actuates them, he was aware was only practiced for the effect it had upon the world, and not for any benefit the Africans derived; for he knew that the condition of the recaptured negroes, as English apprentices, was infinitely worse than as Spanish slaves; for in the one case they had all the horrors of slavery without the name or benefits, in the other the name without the horrors.

He was congratulating himself on his good fortune, and the prospect of making a safe and profitable voyage, when the current of his thoughts were changed by the appearance of a sail on his weather bow. The sloop lost time by heaving-to, to get in her boats, and was about ten miles astern; and the strange sail was some six miles ahead, standing to the northward and eastward, a course that would bring her exactly across the schooner’s track.

“Take the glass, Mateo,” said Willis, “and jump up on the fore-topsail yard, and see if you can make out that chap ahead; he may be only some merchantman after all.”

Mateo took the glass, and rapidly going aloft, sung out in a voice of surprise—“Soul of my mother! if it is not our old friend the Scorpion! who must have a new captain, for you left the other past service!”

Willis was at a loss how to act. If he kept on he would meet the Scorpion, and the sloop behind would soon be up, and then he would have them both on him, and the brig alone was more than a match for the Maraposa; eat them out of the wind he could not, for they were both to windward of him; to bear away dead before it was only the same thing as keeping on, for both vessels, spreading a great deal more canvas, would have outsailed him, going with the wind over the tafferel.

“Well, Mateo, what do you think of the prospect?” asked Willis of his mate, as he joined him on deck.

“Pretty squally, sir! we can’t run either way!”

“No! but we can keep on and fight!”

“Yes, sir! but if the brig wings us, and we can hardly expect to get off again with sound spars, we will only fall into the clutches of the sloop, even if we whip the brig.”

“Well,” said the captain, “we can’t do any better, and must make our wits help us. To begin with, set the Portuguese flag, and let each man arm himself with four pistols and a cutlas, and be ready to obey orders.”

The vessels were rapidly approaching one another, and the brig, getting within reach, fired. The ball struck in the water so close to the schooner as to cast the spray on her deck; but another shot coming through the bulwarks, and lodging in the heel of the bowsprit, Willis lowered his ensign, in token of submission; and putting his helm up, lay-to, by bringing the schooner in the wind.

When the ensign was lowered, the brig ceased firing; and getting within hailing distance, an officer on her forecastle, ordered the Maraposa to round-to under her lee-quarter.

“Ay, ay,” answered Willis, as he heard the order given on board the brig to back the main-topsail. Shoving his helm shear a-port, he brought the schooner directly athwart the brig’s weather bow. As soon as he heard the vessels grate, as they came in contact, he sung out, “Away, ye butterflies! away!” and springing up his own fore-rigging, leaped, cutlas in hand, down on the deck of the brig, followed by his whole crew, with the exception of two or three, who remained behind to take charge of the schooner.

The brig’s crew had not time to rally from the surprise of this unexpected and desperate onslaught; for the slavers rushed upon them with the ferocity and vindictiveness of bloodhounds. Discharging their pistols as they jumped on board, they threw them at the heads of their foes, with wild yells, and then, with boarding-axe and cutlas, they joined in the deadly encounter.

Surprised by the suddenness of Willis’s attack, and unprepared for it, the Englishmen gave back before the impetuosity of his first burst, and he was soon in possession of the forecastle; but, rallying in the gangways, the slaughter on both sides was immense—hand to hand, toe to toe, they fought; and as a man on either side fell, another stepped into his place.