George Henty - A Roving Commission - or, Through the Black Insurrection at Hayti

The prisoner had been placed on board the Cerf , which, as soon as she was fairly at sea, was altered as far as possible in appearance by a white band with ports painted along her sides; a false stem of an entirely different shape from her own was fastened to her, her light upper spars sent down and replaced by stumpy ones, and other changes made that would help to alter her appearance.

Were she recognized by the pirates as she sailed past their island it would at once be suspected that one of the men recently captured had revealed the rendezvous, and that she was cruising near it to obtain an exact idea of the best mode of attack before other craft came up to assist her. They had no doubt that the pirates had already received news of the surprise and capture of the brigantine. Some of the men who escaped would doubtless have made for the nearest port, and hired a negro craft to take them to their own island, which they would have reached before the Orpheus arrived at Port Royal with her prizes. The pirates would therefore be on their guard, and would either have deserted their head-quarters altogether or have added to their defences. The sight of their late consort would confirm their fears that their whereabouts had become known, and it was therefore of importance that her identity should not be suspected.

Changed as she now was, she might be taken for a man-of-war brigantine. Her height out of water had been increased by four feet by painted canvas fastened to battens. She had ten ports painted on each side, and looked a very different craft from the smart brigantine that had sailed away from the island. It had at first been suggested by Mr. Playford that she should be disguised so as to look like a trader, but Captain Crosbie had decided against this.

"There are," he said, "three of these pirates, and even two of them might together be more than a match for you. By all accounts they are each of them as strong as you are in point of armament, and would carry at least twice as many men as you have. Even if you beat them off it could only be at a very great cost of life, and I certainly should not like you to undertake such an enterprise unless you had at least double the strength of men, which I could not spare you. By going in the guise of a vessel of war they would not care to meddle with you. They would know that there would be no chance of booty and a certainty of hard fighting, and of getting their own craft badly knocked about, so that it will be in all respects best to avoid a fight. They may in that case not connect you with us at all, but take you to be some freshly-arrived craft. You had best hoist the Stars and Stripes as you pass along the coast."

When the changes were all effected the ships parted company. The brigantine was to sail east until within a short distance of Grenada, then to cruise westward along the coast of the mainland; thus going, there would be less suspicion on the part of those who saw her that she was coming from Jamaica. A rendezvous was appointed at the island of Oruba, lying off the mouth of the Gulf of Venezuela.

Their prisoner was French, and he was very closely questioned by Lieutenant Playford, who spoke that language well. He said that they always sailed north to begin with, then sometimes they kept east, and certainly he heard the names of Guadeloupe and St. Lucia. At other times, after sailing north they steered north-west, and came to a great island, which he had no doubt was San Domingo. It was not in this craft that he sailed, he was only transferred to her with some of the others for that cruise only. After they had once made either the western islands or San Domingo, they cruised about in all directions.

"The great point is," Mr. Playford said to the midshipmen after a long talk with the prisoner, "that at starting they generally hung about these islands, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, and so on, for some time, and it was considered their best cruising ground, though also the most dangerous one, as we have always some cruisers in those waters. That would certainly place the island somewhere off the north coast of Caracas. He declared that the first day out they generally passed the western point of an island of considerable size with some high hills. The only island that answers to that account is, as you see in the chart, Margarita. Therefore I feel convinced that the pirate hold is in one of these groups, off Caracas, either Chimana, Borrshcha, or these two islets called Piritu Islands. Altogether, you see, there are over a dozen of these islands scattered along near the mainland.

"It is quite out of the general course of trade, as nothing would go into that bay except a craft bound for San Diego, or this place marked Barcelona, lying a short distance up the river. They would take care not to molest any of the little traders frequenting these ports, and might lie in an inlet in one of these islands for years without their being ever suspected, unless perhaps by some of the native fishermen, who probably supply them with fish and fruit from the mainland. Anyhow, I don't suppose a British cruiser is seen along that coast once a year."

A fortnight later the Cerf passed along under easy sail between the island of Margarita and the mainland. She was now getting very close to the spot where, if the prisoner was right, the pirates' hold lay. The Stars and Stripes was hanging from the peak, and with her high bulwarks and ten ports on each side no one would have suspected that she was not, as she seemed, an American man-of-war, heavily armed. Passing close to another island, they headed more south into the bay as they neared Caracas. Every foot of the islands was closely scanned. Five miles farther, they came abreast of the Chimana isles, and pointing to one of these that lay nearer the shore than the others, the prisoner exclaimed that he was certain that that was the island.

"I am sure of it," he exclaimed, "both from the look of the island itself, and from that high range of mountains on the mainland to the south-east."

"You are quite sure?"

"Certain, captain; there are the large trees I spoke of growing down close to the water. It is behind them that there is a little ravine by which one can climb up."

No alteration was made in the ship's course, but she continued her way until sunset, when she dropped anchor off the mouth of the river La Pasqua, some twenty miles west of the islands.

As soon as it was dark Curtis was sent off in a gig manned by six rowers. The oars were muffled; the orders were to row round the island within an oar's length of the shore, and to find the entrance to the channel, which, if the prisoner was right as to the place, should be on the side facing the mainland. Pierre, the French lad, was taken with them. It was a long row to the island, but the gig was a fast one, and, at three o'clock in the morning, she returned with the news that Pierre's information had been correct. They had found the opening but had not entered it, as Mr. Playford had given strict orders on this point, thinking it probable that there would be a sharp look-out kept in the batteries, especially as the supposed cruiser would certainly have been closely watched as she passed.

An hour later the anchor was got up and the Cerf sailed for Oruba, off which she arrived three days later. There were no signs of the frigate, and indeed the Cerf had arrived at the rendezvous before the time fixed. At daybreak on the third morning the topsails of the Orpheus were made out from the mast-head, and four hours later she and the Cerf met, and Mr. Playford went on board the frigate to report.

"This is good news indeed," the captain said when he heard that the haunt of the pirates had been discovered. "Of course you have taken the exact position of the island, for we must, if possible, take them by surprise?"